I live in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. Palos Verdes is a peninsula, with the ocean on three sides, and my house is near the top at 1300 ft, near the old W6AM rhombic ranch site. I operate 160 m through 1.2 GHz with modern and vintage equipment.
I was first licensed in 1962 at the age of 12 as WN0DHZ, in Colorado Springs, CO. I then moved to Portland, OR and operated as WA7DAC as a teenager. With a DX-60 and Speed-X bug, CW was my favorite operating mode. In college, I operated the Rice University station, W5YG. In grad school at UCLA, I operated W6YRA and received my existing call, N6KN.
I then started my career as an avionics engineer on the McDonnell Douglas Delta Rocket Program and spent many decades designing, building, testing, and launching rockets and satellites, mostly from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg AFB. These included many NASA planetary missions, such as several Mars rovers. In between launches, I was active from W6VLD, the Huntington Beach club station.
I raised a family in Palos Verdes and was fortunate to find a house and receive a permit for a 70-ft tower in a good location. I spent the last five years of my career at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo. Now retired, I have more time for operating events, including CW. I enjoy classical music, literature, and fine art. My wife and I now have a second house in Happy Valley, OR, a suburb of Portland, and I operate from there once in a while but prefer to operate the Palos Verdes station remotely. Remote CW operation is a special challenge, but it can be done, and I enjoy it.
Yes, I still own two DX-60’s and several Speed-X bugs, and I put them on the air for vintage radio events!
This biography is what appeared in Solid Copy when the member joined CWops.