In 1955, at the age of fourteen, I received my license as Wn7YTZ in Olympia, Washington. Those early days were great! The picture below shows my first station, a Heathkit AT-1 and Hallicrafters S40B receiver. Also in the picture is a rather rare WRL Globe Trotter. In 1957, the sun spot cycle was at its peak and was phenomenal. Working DX on 10 meters worldwide, using 60 watts and a 3 element beam was the highlight of my early years. After high school, I joined the US Army Alaska Communications System and was sent to Lena Point, Alaska (near Juneau). After three years, I returned to Washington and worked (except for two years at COMSAT) for the Washington State Patrol Electronic Services Division. I retired as Assistant Commander in 1991. I then worked for Raytheon for seven years, doing jobs for the Federal Aviation Administration as a contractor. We installed equipment all over the country. One of my projects was to build eight mobile air traffic control towers in specially built 5th wheel trailers. They have been used extensively around the United States for special purposes. In 2000, I went to work for the Washington State Department of Transportation as an Electronic Design Engineer on Microwave Communications systems. As of May, 2008 I finally retired for the last time and will be enjoying travel and "Hamming."
I like working DX and receiving QSL cards from around the world. I currently have worked 235 countries and have received 224 DX entities' QSL cards. My XYL, KD7VJQ, has been very active in managing the QSL cards. This is a big job and I have much respect for those DX stations who deal in thousands of cards per year. I use ProLog for electronic logging. It shows just over 4,000 contacts since I started using it in 1999. That's not a large amount, but most all contacts are DX entities. I have my original paper logs dating back to 1955. They total 14 log books and some day I hope to enter all of those contacts into the electronic log system.
The awards I have received are: WAS WAC WAC DXCC WAE WAP RCC. My total countries worked are 231 Mixed and 216 Phone. I find it harder all the time to get new countries. |
I sold the Globe Scout and acquired a Lysco transmitter with VFO and an external modulator. This picture was taken during field day, 1957, on Hawks Prairie near Olympia. The Lysco was a great little rig, but didn't have a lot of power, only about 40 watts. I was beginning to dream of higher power by then, but was enjoying working as many stations as I could, especially DX. |