At the age of 16 I became KN9WEK. Within a year my good friend K9WET (now SK) and I traveled to the Federal Building in Chicago where we both upgraded to General class. Some years later I upgraded to Advanced, and then finally to Amateur Extra. K9WEK is the only call I have ever had. Its not a great call to find mnemonics for, nor that great on cw, but its me!

Just after reaching the age of 18, I joined the USAF and spent a year in tech school at Keesler AFB (Biloxi, MS), and then worked on airborn navigation equipment (F4C Phantoms) for the rest of my 4 year career. I was also stationed at MacDill AFB in Tampa, FL, and Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ.

Upon getting out of the Air Force, I started as an electronic technician at Delco Electronics Division of GM in Kokomo, IN. Five years later I started college, and after another 5 years it was back to Delco -- this time as an Electrical Engineer. There I spent the remainder of my professional career, retiring in 2001.

After my retirement the XYL and I finished the house we were building, and began a home built (from a kit, that is) airplane project. The RV-7A has been flying since its completion in 2004 -- see Vansaircraft.com.

Most of my operating today is on 75 meter AM. I have a home brew pair of 8000 triodes in parallel using a pi-network output. The receiver is a Softrock software defined radio. It runs PowerSDR-IQ which is a version of Flex Radio software. What a great receiver! 160 through 10 meters for well under $100!

Homebrewing and writing microprocessor code are my favorite winter time hobbies these days.

73, Dan

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  Last update ⇰ February 14, 2017