I was born in 1963 in Ohio and moved to Texas with my parents in 1974. We lived in a small town called Murphy just outside of Plano, TX (north of Dallas). Our next door neighbor had this large antenna behind his house (these were about 1.5 acre lots) and my dad came to find out he was an amateur radio operator. His call was K5AT and we came to find out that he was one of only 5 known people at the time who could understand this thing called Morse code at over 100 wpm. A few years later both my dad (WN5OHM then WB5OHM) and myself got licensed. I became WD5GRW in 1977. Over time I obtained my Extra but decided to keep my call. I must have had some ability with rhythm as I not only learned code fairly easily (a requirement of 20 wpm for Extra ) and became a drummer and played snare all through high school.
We moved to Plano shortly after I got licensed. My dad setup a station consisting of a TenTec Triton IV and a Cushcraft 3 element beam up 35 feet. There was also a pretty good sunspot cycle going on. I enjoyed CW at an early age mostly because it just seemed a little awkward “talking” to adults. I did well in the Novice Roundup earning 1st place in NTX and 2nd in Area 5.
As I got older – life happened and radio took a back seat – lol. Band, girls, work, girls, high school, girls, college, work, marriage (to my lovely wife Susan) and 3 of my own girls (all recently out of college).
Amateur Radio found me again after my college graduation in which I somehow ended up at a Christmas party for the local amateur radio club and was then recruited to play drums for a band called Lower Side Band made up of all amateur radio operators. This kept the radio connection there but not really active.
My real radio reinvigoration came with Parks On The Air and learning all the new (to me) modes etc. I just sort of stumbled into it – lots of very nice people. I do a lot of digital (just easier to make more contacts that way) and CW and SSB as I can. My favorite is still CW and I have activated many parks using mostly code. I really enjoy getting out and playing radio – more info on my QRZ page.
Unfortunately still in the work force for a few more years as a Site Reliability Engineer (think IT, AWS, GCP the “cloud” etc.) so CWTs will be scarce but will try as work allows – probably next year. CWops was also something I had heard of and look forward to advancing my skills with.
This biography is what appeared in Solid Copy when the member joined CWops.