W1TR / AFA1DI (USAF MARS) Web Page

Updated 21-Jun-2008 11:21

Mug Shot:

Current QSL Card:

100% QSL policy:

QSLs are sent via LoTW for all QSOs, and paper QSLs are sent to anyone sending me one.

QSL Cards – Blast from the Past

Notable QSL Cards Over the Years

Calls Held and Operating Locations

(W1TR, WA1ALZ, WA2WSB, WA4DDO, W7YH, op at KP4VA)

Memberships:

ARRL IEEE ACM USAF MARS: AFA1DI

#74666

#6775

WAS #924 160 meter CW ARRL Worked All States

(on a single weekend during the 2007 ARRL 160 CW Contest)

DXCC #42050 (finally after 47 years of hamming) 112 confirmed, as of 20-Jun-2008

Radio Awards & Certificates

Family:

Here is a picture of Lyn (XYL WB1CCL), and Terry (Chief OP W1TR) married 17-Jul-2004, but knew each other since mid 1970’s.

We became better friends on Field Day 1977… she used MY callsign to operate 20 meters at night using the phonetics Whiskey One Tokyo Rose…

Boy what a pileup started immediately ! (the 2 element full sized 40m beam at 110 feet on top of the family crane and the 5 element 20m beam at 90 ft didn’t hurt either !)

Current Ham Shack - click on picture or caption:

Upstairs Station Main Station

Backup Station Boat Anchors

Antennas and QTH Mobile Installation

Ham Shacks – Blast from the Past

Ham Career:

My first interest in radio was during the late 1950's when I lived on a farm in Miamisburg, south of Dayton, Ohio. My dad helped me put up a wire antenna in the trees and build a crystal set. One of his colleagues at work, Bob Shuup / W8CEA now a silent key, had a hamshack and I was fascinated.

Spring of 1960, we moved to Valdosta, GA. A fellow grammar school student, Billy Wallace / K4TVE, had a novice license and an EICO 720 + Hallicrafters SX-99. As my Elmer, he helped me learn the code. When he got his general, his uncle bought him a Johnson Ranger (wow, what a rig!). I also hung out with another classmate, Ed Mathis, K4NVI who had quite the setup: an SX-100, HT-37, and Johnson Viking 500 (HIS dad owned the largest hotel chain in Valdosta!)

In August 1961, I was first licensed as WA4DDO. I skipped the novice license (one year, non-renewable) because I did not have money for a transmitter. Just listening on the SX-99 receiver that I bought with grass mowing money from the previous summer, I got my code speed up to 15 wpm, more than adequate for the conditional class license. The local ham who gave me the test (can't remember his callsign) had a 60 ft tower, tri-band yagi beam antenna, Collins KWM-2, and brandy new 30L-1 that just came out at that time. I admired them for years (now I have my own!)

We moved to Florham Park, NJ (WA2WSB) in late fall of 1961 and my dad helped me buy a Heathkit DX-60 for Christmas, and I was on the air with my own station for the first time. With the help of Ed, W2CVW, I became an NCS on the New Jersey Net (NJN) CW traffic handling where we passed 70 messages per hour at 30 WPM during the Vietnam War era, messages from Great Lakes Naval Training Center! I went to my first ARRL Field Day (1962) at the Morris Amateur Radio Club… W2OYH (Old Yankee Hotel) and froze my butt off during the wee hours of the morning while operating a few hours. I helped start the Hanover Park High School Amateur Radio Club, and helped about a dozen members get their Novice license by mentoring them and giving them the exam.

The Summer of 1963 we moved to Trumbull, CT (WA1ALZ). After the 2 year minimum wait time, some friends and I went down to NYC to take the extra class exam in August. I soon got a Central Electronics 20A, Lakeshore VFO, and built my own homebrew pair of 6146's and complete SSB receiver based on an early 60's GE Ham News article, a RTTY demodulator for an old model 14 tape printer, then a homebrew pair of 813's (unshielded, lots of TVI!) and I hung out with the SSB homebrewers on 3999. I became a member of Army MARS but became inactive when I went off to school.

My parents moved to Orangeburg SC the summer (1965) before college, so I was on the air very briefly from there the month before college, and during semester break (winter). They moved back to CT next summer. Then I was off the air for quite a while during school at UConn (BSEE), Stanford Univ. (MSEE). UConn had a club station, W1LXV but it wasn’t very active, and I didn’t have the time anyway! Ditto for Stanford (W6YX). I did, however, continue to participate in ARRL Field Day, at the Englewood Cliffs Amateur Radio Association headed by Dave Popkin W2CC (then WA2CCF). We had 23 simultaneous transmitters and almost a hundred people participating.

Then I lived in Lisle, IL (an apartment city, no antennas allowed) west of Chicago where I worked for Bell Labs, Electronic Switching Division. While at Bell Labs, I acquired a Johnson Pacemaker and used that plus my homebrew receiver to make a couple of contacts using the Lab’s club station antennas. Unfortunately, I left that equipment there when I went back to graduate school at UConn L

I got back on the air in 1973 when I returned to school at UConn for a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, and lived in the nearby countryside (Ashford, CT) a few miles from where I live today. I got a used Eldico SSB-100, a couple of Collins R-390A receivers and a Johnson Valiant from an estate sale (Herb Gordon of Harvard, MA). I had lots of fun converting one R-390A unit into a transmitter, the Collins/Glagowski T-390A! I still have these units today, but they are not yet back on the air! I rejoined the MARS program but this time USAF MARS.

In 1977, there was a window of opportunity to get a 2 letter call for free before the vanity system because the US Supreme Court ruled that ALL license fees were illegal due to their cost structure and struck them down. So I applied for and received W1TR in late spring of 1977. Thinking back, $29 wasn’t really that much to get a 2 letter call (I was eligible in late 1976), but that was a significant amount for a struggling graduate student in those days!

The Natchaug Amateur Radio Association (NARA) quickly recruited me as a CW OP for their field day operation, to battle the rival ECARS group (K1MUJ). Since I was the first recipient of a 2 letter call in the club, we used W1TR for field day operations thereafter. This is where I met my current XYL Lyn, WB1CCL, but it would be over 25 years before we became married (to EACH OTHER)!

In 1978, I moved to the Boston area (Chelmsford, MA) and worked for GTE Labs, Waltham, (yes, more telephones). I became more involved in USAF MARS operations, was State MARS Director in the mid-1980s, and generally tried to balance career, family, finishing my Ph.D., and ham radio.

In 1989 I took a faculty job at Washington State University in Pullman, WA and later at the branch campus in Spokane, WA. It was lots of fun being a W1 in 7 land! My particular interest was 160 meters because I had 4 acres of room and tall trees on a high plateau (2300 ft) overlooking the city of Spokane. It was especially fun when the ARRL made Eastern Washington a separate ARRL section, because it was more rare than NV, ID, ND or DE, and I easily won the ARRL 160 meter CW contest for years until some big guns moved in (I was the only station on from EWA!)

I also operated an elaborate USAF MARS digital packet BBS on 2 HF channels and VHF to handle traffic coming out of Panama, Korea, Hawaii, and Alaska headed for Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, Washington DC, and elsewhere during the Noriega episode and Desert Shield / Desert Storm in Iraq.

In 1996 I returned to the New England area (Upton, MA), and was on the air, but not really that active due to my focus on career, but now I finally have a really nice radio QTH, and a beautiful new XYL who is also a ham (WB1CCL), some really good new equipment, and antennas to enjoy the hobby in all its dimensions once again.

The most fun radio contact for me EVER occurred one night when Roger / VK4YB in Brisbane, and some of his buddies from Australia gave me a call on 160 meters (in Spokane, WA) and caused me to almost fall out of my chair! A close second was when I lived in Chelmsford, MA during the mid 1980's and there was a big aurora, I worked Chicago on 2 meter SSB, wow what a contact! Another interesting phenomenon was an “echo” on both 160 meters and 80 meters of about 1/3 second delay which happened sometime in late 1995. After checking some QST articles and inquiry to the ARRL tech department, the phenomenon matched a situation where a “wormhole” in the earth’s magnetic field developed and my signal went out along magnetic field lines and bounced off the ionosphere in the southern hemisphere and came back. It lasted for about half an hour and disappeared! Weird huh? I also got great excitement from making my first 1296 MHz contacts during the 2007 Summer and Fall ARRL VHF QSO parties to Mt. Greylock (W2SZ), Mt. Wachusett (K1TR), Long Island, Cape Cod, and a few other locals.

Professional Career:

See PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY for more details