N5BF Amateur Radio (Auto-) Biography

back to n5bf/6 ham radio page

Mostly in outline form.  To be updated as time and material allow.

Henrietta, Texas,1962-1966

Learned my first electronics from Lionel Trains, was mostly interested in block switching and signal lights, and automation.

Often visited the Burlington Railroad depot manned by Mr. Montgomery.  I rode my bike down the hill south of town to the tracks.  The highway was smooth.  The dirt road on the west side was not.  One Sunday after church I was racing down that gravel road to get to the crossing before the train did and hit sand at the bottom of the hill, flew off, and hit my head on a rock.  Streaming blood and in pain, I rode back home up the highway, ignoring my friends waving to me from the depot, ignoring the train.  After cleaning up, it was thought that I would be OK to go on an Easter egg hunt later that afternoon, with an Easter egg sized bump in the middle of my forehead.

I would often visit the depot after school when Mr. Montgomery was there.  The northbound "Number 7" was slow and made a station stop at every station, including Henrietta, about 2:30 p.m.  When it was late or I was early, I could see it.  The "Zephyr" (Number 2) roared through southbound around 4:00.  On a rare occasion, the Zephyr would stop.  Henrietta was a flag stop and when there was a passenger to pick up Mr. Montrgomery would flag it down.  They would also stop to let someone off.  Sometimes when loads were high and the trains were off schedule, they would meet and pass at Henrietta.  Number 7 would wait on the siding.  I found this operation fascinating.  These trains were bound for exotic places like Ft. Worth or Denver, but scuttlebutt had it that northbounds stopped in Wichita Falls to let off the dining car before proceeding.  Or was it put the car on?

I think there were also a northbound and southbound trains in the night but I could never stay past dusk.  Just when it would get dark enough to see the next signal light on the next block on the way to Bellevue, I would have to be on my way home.

Mr. Montgomery  taught me American (landline) Morse (clackers) up to five words per minute using a straight key.  He was a master of simultaneous chats with other operators up and down the line at speeds like 50 words per minute.  I was becoming proficient in hearing letters on the trainer when an employee of the railroad was assigned to the depot for training.  The new hire was unhappy that I learned landline Morse with more facility than he did and one day lassoed me out in the gravel parking lot.  There is a lot more I'd like to say about Mr. Montgomery.  He passed messages to train engineers by tying them up in string and holding them out on a pole gadget for them to catch as they cruised by.  He counted cars on trains and made reports.  He handled the mail.  Incoming mail was dumped from the moving train.  Outgoing mail was hung from a contraption that allowed the passing train to snag it into the mail car at 50+ miles per hour.  He sold tickets and dealt with C.O.D., grudgingly, on train-borne deliveries.  Sometimes when there were urgent Western Union messages after hours he would go down and open up the depot to handle them.

One day my friends and I watched from the south facing hill as a train passing through town came uncoupled.  The rear half with the caboose coasted to a stop.  This was a huge thrill for us would-be detectives.  We went to investigate what sabotage, conspiracy, or vandalism had led to this cataclysmic event and, of course, after weeks of investigation, had learned nothing.  Mr. Montgomery had little to say about the whole incident.

After we moved to Dallas (Pleasant Grove) I heard that, in a consolidation, Mr. Montgomery was transferred to the bigger operation in nearby Wichita Falls.  Later he left the railroad or had been laid off, or retired.  Staff for individual depots went the way of the steam engine.

Unfortunately, it has been so long that I can remember little else.  We did visit Mr. Montgomery in 2004 while passing through town on vacation.  He was retired, still smoking his pipe.  Asked him many questions about train operations and Morse.  He tried hard and appreciated the attention, but didn't honestly remember me.

Taylor, Texas, 1968 - 1971

Attended some meetings of the Taylor (Texas) High School Amateur Radio Club.  This looked like an opportunity for hams around town to get together in a huge junk shack and work on projects on a Monday night.  No identifiable connection with Taylor High School, which was nowhere nearby (old or new campus) or any Taylor High School students.  Someone who wasn't going to do anything with it got to borrow the code practice oscillator.  Dreamed of building telescopes and radios but no license for anyone.

Early Friend, Rob Aanstoos, WB5FID
(no link)
Rob and I first met in Jr. High in Taylor, Texas.  We were both new to Taylor public schools as my family had just moved there from Dallas (summer 1968) and he had just matriculated from the parochial elementary school there.  We had a lot in common including the fact that we were new to everybody else and some of the other kids had trouble telling us apart.  Over the three years I lived in Taylor, we became big friends, doing many projects together from fighting pollution to attempting to observe the May 1970 Transit of Mercury with a homebuilt telescope.

Hubbard, Texas, 1971 - 1974

Elmer, Phil Woodard, W5KRZ (1900-1973)
(photo unavailable)

Phil deserves a large writeup.  Mentioned in Hubbard Tornado, 1973 March 10.



In summer 1971, my family moved again, a hundred miles away to Hubbard, Texas.  Rob and I stayed in touch by mail and, at some point both had the idea to get into amateur radio to stay in touch and "save postage."  (Keep in mind, it was a different era.)  We each wrote the other about this idea cold and crossed in the mail!  He was elmered by A. Peters, W5LHX, and first licensed WN5FID in September 1971 (part of the old Taylor High School club, where Rob's brother Ted had gotten started) while and I studied a friend from church, Phil Woodard, W5KRZ,  licensed WN5GRZ in March 1972.  Around a year after that, we had our first QSO (amateur radio contact).  We were in very regular contact through high school, college, and into the early 80s while our lives, careers, and amateur radio interests diverged otherwise.  We did Field Days '81, '82, '83, and '86 together and I returned to Taylor July 4th, 1992 to play organ at Rob's wedding.

From the first I was subconsciously working on Courtney's Three Rules of Antennas --

1.  Transduces energy into free space
2.  Located in a reasonable place in free space (i.e., that connects to someone else's free space)
3.  Makes some kind of reasonable match

in that order of importance.

My first antenna (circa 1972) was a 120 foot dipole and a 60 foot dipole fed in parallel with 60 feet of RG-58.  No balun, no tuner anywhere except the Pi network in the tank circuit of a homebrew 6BQ6 crystal controlled (and chirping) transmitter.  The two trees in the front yard were not 120 feet apart so the last 10 or 20 feet of the 120 feet was off in some other direction convenient to limbs but still up in the air.  The larger dipole held it all up so the smaller dipole drooped down, inverted V style.  The feedpoint was probably 25 feet above ground.  All elements were in plane (broadside to NW / SE) though I moved them to different anchor points in a futile attempt to get some steering action (i.e., "work Canada" or whatever).  It didn't matter that it wasn't all perfect.  Compromises (bent elements, etc.) didn't violate any of the three rules.

It was supposedly optimized for 80/40 (Phil wouldn't condone using traps, he had shorted his traps out in his trap dipole and just used it for MARS.) but this antenna loaded and made contacts on 80/40/20/15/10 quite effectively.  It burned clouds before the term "NVIS" was invented, it worked 50 states (46 confirmed), it was the first thing back in service after the tornado (3/10/73), it kept schedules, it got OO notices, it caused TVI, it passed traffic, it heard OSCAR 6.  It didn't do much DX.  Sunspots were poor in '72/'73.  First "DX" was Agua Prieta, Mexico, off the end -- it didn't have much pattern.  But it took power (well, 18 watts) and put some of it (apparently) out in free space.  That's what counts.

Upgraded through General (WB5GRZ), Advanced, and Extra before leaving for college.  These exams make other interesting stories, particularly the 20 WPM Code test for Extra.

Morse Code was quite difficult for me to learn, as it is for many, but I had musical background and discipline and with the help of an old WWII Morse paper tape sending machine loaned me by W5KRZ, I essentially taught myself Morse.  Then, as we were supposed to do back in those days, I got on the air as WN5GRZ and started making contacts to build my skill and speed.  Before I left for college I had gotten all the way to Extra class, all the testing except the Novice having been done in the FCC field office in Dallas, Tx.  We'd get up at five in the morning and drive two hours to downtown Dallas, stand in line at the Post Office on the ground floor of the Federal Building to buy a money order for the testing fees, then stand in line on the thirteenth floor of the same building to spend it with the FCC.

The story about my 20 wpm code test in that office is interesting.  They sent for five minutes and you had to get one minute straight perfect.  For 20 wpm that was 100 characters in a row.  The first 100 characters on my sheet were perfect, then the 101st was a mistake.  The examiner looked at this, recounted, looked over the rest of the sheet where there were no more than 65 in a row correct and, passed me.  This was when you had to pass both elements in the same day to actually upgrade, so I sweated that written part 4B!

This was even more interesting in that, years later as a volunteer examiner, I had a very similar thing happen with an applicant on a 20 wpm test.  He didn't know what he was copying, but was writing down letters rote and got 102 in a row right.  We passed him too.

I did a bunch of time in in the National Traffic System.  I used to be the Texas (phone) Traffic Net (3935) relay to TEX, its CW counterpart (3760).  I remember being thrilled when I was "accepted" enough into the group to be allowed to move on to RN5 for QTC a few times.

Speaking of code, I collected a little paper from the W1AW Qualifying Runs.  They were formal tests of how fast a person could copy Morse Code over the air.  W1AW sends code practice several times a day on HF (even now!) but these runs were special in that no check text (usually a QST article) was given, but you mailed in your copy for grading.  Starting as a Novice, I got the 10, 15, and 20 WPM awards.  They go up to 40, but I stalled there at 20 for a couple of decades.




Rob and I tried working into Ft. Worth (34/94) from the roof of the church with an extension chord run down into the attic.  Had one mid-day minimums QSO.

Was briefly (figurehead) President of the Mid-Texas Amateur Radio Club.  Trustee was Bud Webb, K5QVI (see next) in Hillsboro.  Repeater was 04/64.

This was the computing technology we had when Rob and I left for college (to Rice and Baylor respectively).

Rob had an SR-50 in 1974, as he prepared to go to Rice.  His dad had bought it mail order and was floored when TI sent a partial refund, the prices were dropping so fast.  (Might have been pre-production.)  He turned to me and said, "One of these days you will be able to buy this for $8.88."  When I came across just that capability in the drug store for $8.96 (around 2005), I bought one and mailed it to Rob.

 In 1973 I had a Texas Instruments SR-10.  It was four-function plus sqrt which was as enormous advance.  Both the SR-10 and the SR-50 were in the $100 - $200 range when they came out (about a year apart if memory serves).

As early as a few months after being first licensed in March 1972, I was exposed to amateur satellite work.  I listened to AO-6 (which was Mode A only) and dreamed for years of being able to put together an uplink.

First experience with Two Meters

My initial two meter FM experience in amateur radio was, arguably, my favorite.  I had started on HF, indeed, mostly 40 and 80 (sunspot minimum, as now, in 1972) and thought of 2 meters as exoticically high frequency.  Also, I'd never worked FM as a mode.  Also, that was where the OSCAR 6 uplink was.  Not to mention essentially every ham in the country.  Nonetheless, my own Elmer, W5KRZ, had himself only tried two meters once, built some gear, drove towards his buddy, who was coming the other way from Corsicana, and, having worked only when they were about a mile apart, came away with the impression that it would only work over about a mile, so he was not "up" on it.  But, after he was SK, I remained affiliated with his 3918/3930 crowd, some of whom were more progressive.

Bud, K5QVI, on behalf of hams who wanted to put a repeater in Hillsboro and use it regionally, got in on a surplus taxi-cab radio buy from Denton (Denton is where I-35 splits east/west to go to Dallas/Ft. Worth.  The other end of the split is at Hillsboro.)  He bought up ten radios and sold them all to us for, I think $175 each.  Then there was $36 for new crystals, and we'd go over to his professional radio shop in HIllsboro and he'd put in the crystals and repeak the strips, and we had radios.  My frequencies were 34/94, 28/88, 04/64, and 52/52, as follows:  34/94 was the national standard, though the nearest one was in Ft. Worth and we nearly never heard or could work it from Hubbard.  28/88 was the main machine in Waco, which formed a 25-30 mile triangle with Hillsboro / Hubbard.  04/64 was the proposed Hillsboro frequency. And 52/52 was the national simplex.  You had to have that.

I did in fact make contacts on all of these, but most of the time, since I was a club member and all, the thing sat on 04/64 in "transmit filaments off" mode.  I bought a car battery (not knowing what I was doing) and charger for this.  Still have the charger.  Tx filaments off (rx only) it was 5 A.  Filaments on 7.5 A.  Tx low power (5 watts out) 12.5 A (150 watts in!)  Tx high power (25 watts out) 15 A.  I could usually work Hillsboro on low power (had built an armstrong rotatable 3 element beam from the handbook) but the problem always was somebody would call me and I'd run over and switch on the Tx filaments and just as it was warm enough to operate, the guy would give up and sign.  Oh, the other problem was that  the battery was just a capacitor for the system.  Operating even in Rx only it would sag to insensitivity and inability to transmit in about a minute after switching the charger off.  So, I was in the habit of switching them both on or off at the same time.

Put the thing in dad's truck and nearly burned it down, two different ways (not big enough wire, then hooked up backwards).  Knocked off my first home brew two meter antenna clean on a low hanging HIllsboro tree right after my very first ever mobile QSO.  Learned about spring loading -- and store bought antennas -- that day.

Eventually, I bought an old HR-2A off of Bob (who would later be N5TT) and with twelve channels and lots more opportunities (including 94/94, 94/34, and 34/34 crosswired from the same crystal pair -- clever) the Progline retired.  But not before I had to buy a new multi-vibrator for its single strip power supply (a bigger model had a dual tube PA (6146s at two meters!  No wonder taxi drivers back then usually sat in the cars idling!)  The HR-2A was nicer, incredibly smaller, would work on the battery not charged (and I modified it for a true low power setting too, taking the idea from my Heath 2036 instruction book), and was the one I worked Robby on the one minute 34/94 opening to Austin one Sunday morning, but it had none of the glamour or lug of the Progline.

I took that Progline and all it's paraphernalia to the 5th floor (attic) of Brooks Hall at Baylor!  (Yes, with the battery, charger and everything.)  I had used a DPDT and an unused control line (15 feet of control cable from the head to the actual radio, a 2 foot by 2 foot by 9 inches metal box weighing about 30 lbs.) to get to the low power toggle and, somehow (maybe a second line) to the Tx filaments toggle.  I worked assiduously on a project to multiplex the four crystal select lines (they just grounded one end of the crystal through the entire control cable!) to get 16 choices so I could have more frequencies, or maybe even select from a synthesizer that I dreamed of building.  But, I never did those things.

The Progline, sadly, was lost in a move.  The control head ended up at Ed Moers' house, where I suspect it still is.  The rest, I don't know.  The battery is hazardous waste long ago and, like I said, I still have, and use, the car battery charger.


Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 1974 - 1978

Was a Piano Performance Major.

Freshman:  Brought my GE Progress Line converted taxi-cab radio to 511 Brooks (dormitory).  (Conversions were sponsored by K5QVI in nearby Hillsboro.)  Lugged the main unit, 25 feet of control cable, the control head, and a car battery up five flights of stairs to set up in our attic - gables room.  The rig had 34/94 (closest was Ft. Worth, 100 miles north) 28/88 (local in Waco), 52/52, and 04/64 (Hillsboro, 30 miles north).  Did not get much use.  The other six guys in the room didn't want to listen to it.

Sophomore:  No amateur radio involvement, nearly dropped out entirely.  This was long before Baylor had an engineering school or WA5BU.

Junior:  Ran a QRPp Micro-Mountaineer built by Bill Cox, W5JRM (another ham from Hubbard) to thirty feet of wire out of a second floor dormitory window (Kokernot).  Made a few contacts.  Used the same rig as a minimalist in Borger, Texas at my grandfather's house using his old A.M. aeriel for an antenna.

Senior.  Burning out on music.  Worked as a DJ at KEFC (95.5 FM, later KNFO later gone) local Christian FM station.  Got a Second Phone Commercial license to do this.  Built a Heathkit 2036 (synthesized FM radio) in the first three days of spring break.  Bought an Argonaut 509 with 405 50-watt linear and operated a 100 foot longwire above Knotty Pines apartments.  Interfered with the guy's stereo upstairs and TVs for blocks.  (Local hams called on two meters to complain!)  Participated in Heart of Texas ARC Field Day, WD5IAF ('Idiots And Fools').

In 1978 the FCC rules about callsigns changed.  No longer did I have to wait until 1997 or 1999 to upgrade to a 1x2.  Applying for several, I got randomly assigned N5BF on my upgrade attempt.  The first time I used the call was late in the evening on 15 CW after the band was closed.  A local, not being up to speed on the new callsign rules, came right back thinking I was a DX from Africa or somewhere.  Kept WB5GRZ at my parent's house in Wortham until it expired.  By then the FCC only allowed a person to hold one callsign.

Dallas, Texas, 1978 - 1980

Married Viann Owens, a nursing student at Baylor (now WD5EHM) and lived in apartments near Baylor Medical Center and Love Field.  Operated minimally with the Argonaut.  Interfered with new neighbors.  Worked at Balch Springs Police Department as a dispatcher.  Upgraded to First Phone and got a job at the Channel 39, KXTX transmitter (where the tower later collapsed in, I think, 1993).  Later moved into the Ch. 39 studios north of downtown on Harry Hines and worked as a video tape editor and operator.

Tomball, Texas, 1980 - 1984

Used the Argonaut 509 / 405 with a 300 foot long wire and tuner.  Built up a budget satellite station from kits with the antennas remoted to the middle of the 5 acres property with surplus cables.  Worked as an installer for Houston Cable TV (Warner).

Late in the first life of AO-7 and mid-life of AO-8, I did get to the point where I could make satellite QSOs.  Using transverters on the Argonauts at first, I was on A and J and was working on B when P3A crashed on launch in May of 1980.

My 10 meter antenna at this QTH was built specifically for satellite work.  It was a turnstile suspended 3/8 wave above the lawn and fed with a 62 ohm matching section.  Buried RG-58 brought the signal the rest of the way to a preamp in the shack.  For uplink I had a transverter 300 feet in the other direction out in the pasture.  A surplus section of 75 ohm cable TV drop line took the 10 meter IF out to a transverter at the base of the antenna telephone pole.  A switching circuit trickle charged a car battery most of the time except when I threw the switch enabling the transverter.  Transmit IF was an Argonaut 509 driving a dummy load and all that RG-59.  Receiver was an old Hallicrafter's SX-111.  I must have made hundreds of Mode-A contacts, AO-7 and AO-8, on that setup or ones similar to it elsewhere.  I remember Mode-A being challenging and not going all the way down to the horizon like UHF/VHF does.

Suffered the loss of AMSAT's Phase 3-A spacecraft, and the operational but damaged AO-10, as recounted on the AMSAT page as is the story of how I started to get involved in AMSAT by setting up a station and writing a satellite tracking program for the Timex-Sinclair ZX-81 which would eventually be marketed by AMSAT as AMS-81 under then VP Operations Ralph Wallio's leadership (see W0RPK below).

During this time I worked for a year as a cooperative education student at NASA Johnson Space Center.  During that time, the first SAREX flight occurred with Owen Garriot, W5LFL, aboard STS-9.

The day of the launch when it was time for the first pass over Houston, I discretely went out into the employee parking lot in front of Building 44 at the appropriate time to listen for Owen.  Being the first pass after launch and he wasn't on yet, but I did hear him from home later.  I did not make a QSO during the flight.  My rig was a five watt HT to a mobile antenna.  I  actually met Owen while attending a W5RRR club function some years later after he had retired from the astronaut corps.  (I also met Tony England W0ORE when he came to give a talk at JPL once (see JPL below) and Ron Parise, WA4SIR at an AMSAT Symposium.)  I think it was Ron to whom I sold my 271/471 radios to when I retired from AMSAT in 1991.N

Houston, Texas, 1984 - 1987

Lived in an apartment near the Astrodome to which we brought home our first baby, Viannah (now KG6GXW).  Did FD-85 QRP from the apartment with a short 30 guage "long" wire, interfering with the upstairs neighbors "touch" lights.  Bought an IC-02AT, IC-3AT, IC-4AT and made extensive use of all of them.

Got a second bachelor's degree, in Electrical Engineering with Honors at University of Houston, 1986.  Worked as a Coop at Johnson Space Center, as a small businessman collaborating with MTS in Cypress, and for Microlink making paging transmitter controllers in Webster.

Moved to Prestonwood (back northwest towards Tomball) with the new baby and started setting up a "real" satellite station (IC-27A/471A).  Got started in packet radio, worked on the HouSat amateur satellite upstart.

See about PTSE-H on the AMSAT page.

Had our second daughter, Katherine, now KG6HUI.

La Canada, California, 1987 - present

Lived slightly above Foothill at 4522 Ocean View for the first six and a half years.

Work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, first in high precision scientific GPS systems, later on the Space Interferometry Mission, and now as a navigation software and autonomous spacecraft navigations system developer.  Was AMSAT Vice President for Operations from 1988 - 1991

In 1988 there is a big digression into AMSAT Officialdom, documented on the AMSAT page.

During one of the Shuttle SAREX flights in this era, I remember that I had the SAREX packet robot pretty much to myself from westerly AOS for two or three minutes, just long enough to get up to where I was waiting for the ACK to my disconnect packet to qualify for a Gold "complete" QSL (as opposed to a Silver "heard but not complete" one).  AOS at W5RRR, the club station at Johnson Space Center was right then and I never made that last ACK, not in a dozen tries!  I think that was the WA4SIR flight in about 1990 and I did eventually get my silver QSL.  Although I've copied SAREX, MIR, and ISS many times, and acted once as a relay station for a school to talk to astronauts and ask them questions, I lost interest in working manned orbiters.  Maybe I don't like the pileups that occur whenever someone gets on the air from space.  Maybe they're not going far enough in their voyages to be interesting.

After four or five years off the satellites to go back to college and get an engineering degree, I set up a pretty standard station with IC-271/471/1271 and Telex Hygain 22 and 40 element crossed yagis with az/el rotators and Lanwehr preamps.  (This started in 1986 at Prestonwood in Houston and continued to Ocean View in La Canada.)  I had a long L-band yagi and a receive converter for S-Band with a loop yagi too.  This ran on until I retired from AMSAT officialdom in 1991 at which point I said that appliance radios weren't any fun, and neither was officialdom and that when I came back I'd build the radios on the way because part of what I'm in it for is to understand how it all really works. 

One skill to build was CW.  Picking up where I left off in the 1972, I finished up the 25, 30, and 35 WPM Qualifying Runs.  At 35 WPM I copied by hand.  Attempted a 40 WPM a few times, but they don't offer regular practice at that speed over the air and I didn't make that one perfect minute before something else got more interesting.  (OK, I did do 25 WPM at Tomball in 1981, but considered that a false re-start.)




I am an long time member of the JPL ARC, W6VIO.  Have participated in several Field Days ('88, '89, and '90 with the club, '91 with WB6VRN, mostly satellites), Sweep Stakes, Top Band, VHF/UHF and other on the air operating activities and am currently getting involved in software defined radios from the DSP-10 platform.  See n5bf/6 ham radio page.

And, this is interesting.  Here is an assembly code listing of a program that I wrote to provide an interface between computer satellite tracking programs and antennas that wanted to point at the satellites in the sky.  This was for use between InstanTrack, a PC-XT or AT graphic satellite position tracking program and an interface board, the WB5IPM rotator drive control.  The program itself is a "TSR" (Terminate and Stay Resident).  I know that I once had the skill to write these programs and that I actually did such things professionally (at MicroLink, on paging transmitters), and I remember doing this work, but don't remember a thing about the details of it, save what I can make out from the comments.  And, the code itself is Greek to me.  I haven't assembled anything in over a dozen years.

Another long time goal was Worked All States.  Before leaving Hubbard for college I had 50 worked but only 46 confirmed.  After moving down the hill to the current QTH in 2004, I started QSLing contet contacts (SS, Top, etc.) with the goal of getting those 50 cards for WAS.  It turned out to be harder than I'd thought it would be, but in 2000 I finally had the piece of paper.  Notice that I am apparently the 49,974th radio amateur to qualify for this award!

Note that Alabama is K4JYO, also "Courtney" but he goes by "Cort," something that I couldn't do.  :-)

Had our third child, John, now KG6HCO.  Did FD 2002 with him (see FD 2002 (How I Broke My Arm)).

In 1999 I put up a 15/17/20 dipole hung between two trees.  As predicted by EZNEC there was some tricky interaction getting them all to mutually tune but once it was up in operation it was no-tune, no-problem KW radiator on those bands for it's whole life.  In 2009 I had to have those trees taken out and, although I have tried, have not been able to find a satisfactory place to re-erect it.  So I'm back to the MFJ-1768 and its 300 watt limit and razor sharp tuning.  (Really 100 watts modulo bug parts in the big capacitor!)  Operationally its more hassle but it gets out about the same thing, for "low" power.

A 6./10 version of the same antenna never quite worked very well.  Possibly because it was only about two feet above the roof, but also because I suspect a 30/60 MHz in parallel would have nearly no interaction but a 30/50 does.  Would have been interesting to look at that on an analyzer.

Current interests are construction and software projects and operating events to test the results.  Per my own analysis quoted by W2FS here, I strive to find the proper balance between being a builder and an operator, but really want to be a builder.

Collaborator, Ralph Wallio, W0RPK
My predecessor as AMSAT V.P. of Operations, elmer and friend, Ralph has been involved in virtually every aspect of amateur radio over a long and fruitfull amateur radio career.  We've done many projects together such as:

- AMS-81, a Timex/Sinclair computer port of W3IWI's BASIC TRACK program for earth satellite tracking.  (1981-3)
- Modified Ralph's Swan-Mark II for 160 meters.  (c. 1998)
- Drove across the U.S. and back making the navigation trace seen at spring 2004 trip link  Ralph provided the APRS support.

In addition, see the research Ralph has collected on
Hubbert's Peak:
The Mother of all Perfect Storms
(lower right on his home page) and The Coming Global Oil Crises as you consider your favorite candidate's energy platform in upcoming elections.


Background on La Canada Flintridge PERCS (Public Emergency Radio Communication Service) -- collected 8/22/13

In 1994 Frosty Boyd, KB6FNW, retired from being an M.D. and using the FCC database for 91011, formed a local group that he called VERTS.  This was at the same time we were buying and moving into our house in DM04vf.  At it's peak PERCS had 40-50 members, a couple of dozen of which checked into the Thursday evening 8 p.m. (local) net on 144.465 FM simplex.  N6CI and I are among those who have been PERCS from the beginning.  There were annual social events.  There was a website at the city's website which appears no longer to be there.

The net is still held today (2013 November) but many have passed on or moved away and Frosty is in poor health.  A typical checkin in 8-10.

This group provided communications for the La Canada Fiesta Days parade on Memorial day each year, on our 2 meter simplex frequency, having taken over when the JPL ARC that had done it previously faltered at some point in the late 90s.  I have supported the parade for both organizations.

After the Oakland Fires and Northridge Earthquake, California law was changed to require a professional emergency planner and VERTS (volunteers) in each community.  At first PERCS was VERTS, and many of us attended something like 24 hours of training, CPR, building collapse, cribbing, Urban Search and Rescue-type things.  We were issued orange city shirts and IDs.  At the time I was well acquainted with the other amateurs and the city disaster coordinator.  The day that a power vault blew its cover on Foothill near Oakwood, we were activated to alert nearby businesses about the situation.

That was two or three coordinators ago now and I no longer know anyone in city hall.

Some years ago, possibly in the 2005 time frame, the city got tired of dealing with PERCS, hams who typically didn't want to do all that other non-radio training, and made up their own VERTS organization without the amateur radio focus.  Some VERTS moved over but not most.  I was pre-occupied with other things at the time and was only peripherally involved or even aware.  The Fiesta Days activities went to the new, more formal group via Family Radio Service radios.

This group never used the JPL repeaters, though they would, of course, have been welcome.  The attitude was that LCF was small and simplex works best when infrastructure is down.  And there's no inter-organizational coordination required, although I offered.



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last update 2013 November 16