A lifelong tinkerer (I was the kid who took all of his toys apart) I discovered that amateur radio opened up a whole new world of learning and I received my tech license in 2008 (original call KJ4CMA). Although my ham journey started after the end of the code testing requirement, I found myself fascinated with code and the opportunities it presented.
After a couple of “false starts” and some frustration with my autodidactic attempts at learning code, I found the relatively new CW Academy and signed up immediately. A wise choice, as I would later discover that the most difficult part of learning code with CW Academy was waiting for the start date!
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before my newfound skill and on-air activities in general had to take a back seat over the next few years as I began to realize that I would need to put all available resources into my pursuit of higher education if I wanted to complete my degree.
It wasn’t until 2022 that I was able to seriously return to the air, and I discovered that the now extremely popular “Parks on the Air” program had an active CW component. This unintentionally started me in a CW “immersion” program by allowing me to get on the air and “hunt” a few contacts on a near daily basis, even if I was pressed for time. This led to my participation in the intermediate and finally advanced CW Academy courses, and code skill advancement was my priority. It wasn’t long before I was reaching milestones I previously thought would be unreachable.
My current on air pursuits are almost all CW now – hunting and activating parks on the air, CW contests (the weekly SST, MST and CWT sessions in particular) and trying to make one CW contact every day for a year.
Most of my time is spent as a sales manager in the industrial HVAC and power generation equipment world. In my free time, aside from getting on the air, I enjoy working on and occasionally getting to use my “classic” boat and beekeeping, but most of all I enjoy spending time with my wife of 15 years and our three corgis.
When I first found out about CW Academy, I made it my long-term goal to make it into CWops. I’d like to extend my most sincere gratitude to Larry (K7SV), Bill (W3PNM) and Mark (VE3BXG) for their tutelage during my CW Academy courses; and also thank Nick (W0NY), Hank (W6SX), Noah (NI9F) and Doug (KR2Q) for sponsoring me and helping me to reach my goal.
This biography is what appeared in Solid Copy when the member joined CWops.