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TANSTAAFL |
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Bob's Projects |
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Amateur Radio |
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Grace and I were both licensed in the mid-50’s. I held Novice call WN1ING in 1956 while stationed in Massachusetts and received K5KDN after passing my Conditional license exam while stationed in Asmara, Eritrea later that year. Grace’s call, K5YTT, is the call she was issued when we were married in 1959 and she officially changed her residence from Iowa to Texas. Her original call was K0MET. Our station call in Asmara was ET2US which was considered to be rare DX at the time. We made the transition from AM to SSB, with a Central Electronics 20A kit, and really created a stir on the upper end of 20 meters. That was when the American phone band ended at 14300 and we would hang out at about 14303. The pile-ups were tremendous! When I left the Army in 1958 I went to work for Busacker Electronics in Houston. When a position became available, I moved into the amateur radio department where I sold ham equipment for the next six years. During this same period Grace was a charter member of GAYLARK (Gulf Area Young Ladies Amateur Radio Klub) and a professional musician with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. I went to work for North American Aviation on the Apollo Project in the mid-60’s, we were raising a family, and ham radio had to take a back seat to other interests. We were in and out of it, periodically, over the next 40 years. I retired in 2000 and hadn’t really kept up with what was going on in radio. Grace received a flyer for the Austin SummerFest that year and we decided to go, just for fun. The first person I met going into SummerFest was Gary Schmidt, W5ZL, who I had known from my Busacker days. Gary was selling some gear and I left the hamfest with a Kenwood TS-440 and other goodies. Back on the air again! Shortly thereafter, Gary introduced me to Gerald Youngblood, CEO of FlexRadio. I ended up buying an SDR-1000 and started writing code for Flex on a volunteer basis. That association (and friendship) has continued on to the present. Our station is now exclusively software defined radios (Flex 5000, Flex 3000, and Flex 1500), and I continue to write and maintain code for Flex. Our station is on the second floor of our home, one room dedicated to radio. The photos on the accompanying pages tell the story. |
