I was born in 1950 and by the time I was a pre-teen I was listening to “rock and roll” on the local AM stations. At night, I liked to tune around to see how far I could receive stations from the middle of Kansas. That lead me ham radio at the age of 15.
I was WN0OWN for a year and could not pass the 13 wpm code exam. Finally passed the code with flying colors and received the call WA0SWC which I had till 1977 then I applied for K0WA. During those years, I honed my CW skill on the National Traffic System I was a net control for QKS, the Kansas CW Traffic net at the age of 17, was a regular on the Tenth Region CW Net, and went to Central Area Net many times to handle traffic. Those days are long passed.
I attended Kansas State University in the 70s and activated W0QQQ many times on CW and Phone Sweepstakes with a host of other operators. There, I got the contesting bug. That bug bit me hard too.
After graduation, I moved to Salina, Kansas which had a superb amateur radio club and a lot of contesters. I was in radio being a newsman for KSAL for years. There I honed my contesting and DXing skills with the likes of WA0TKJ and AB0S. Tim, AB0S and I have been hamming together for over 40 years.
I then took a job at K-State as a professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and had access to a 200 foot tower. I retired two years ago from IT where I worked as a manager at a medical center, the computer “guy” at a small school district, and a help desk guru at a manufacturing plant.
My current station features a plain-Jane K3, P3, AL82, and a Palstar HF Auto. Antennas are a C3E at 60 feet, dipoles for 80 and 40, a full size 40 meter vertical with 32 radials, and a 160 meter inverted-L. I have no VHF equipment.
I have been married for 45 years, have a daughter and a son and one granddaughter.
This biography is what appeared in Solid Copy when the member joined CWops.