AE8W

I am an electrical engineer that got his start because of ham radio. Starting in 1963 I was taught morse code by Mike Garrett, K9AZS. He is a few years older than I am and is blind. I remember watching naively as he tuned the xmtr's VFO to different frequencies then feeling the transmitter's meters dip with his fingers. His father, Carl, a TV repairman and ham, W9EUK, had removed the glass off the meters.

Carl coached me on building my 1st xmtr, a 6146B design from a QST of the day. He loaned the metal reamers, my dad & I did the work at home. I did a few contests and loved getting up at 4 AM to QSO with JA friends ... when mom didn't catch me. The clickety-clack of a straight key is incredibly loud in the wee hours. I recruited my HS math teacher to be a ham and he got several students interested years after me. Take it & pass it on.

Ten years later, I missed out on the big Extra license upgrade push while working at Motorola in Schaumburg, IL. The company had a downsize and I transferred away from ham nirvana moving to Pennsylvania. Two weeks after I move to PA several of my buds went to downtown Chicago Fed Building & all passed the exam. My activity diminished. I was armed with a 100W 2m Motorola Micor, but sold it to a club for use as a repeater.

For Motorola in PA I became completely immersed in state & local government 2-way radio systems. I was quite involved in APCO functions. I designed a conventional 2-way radio system for PA State Police, Dept. of Environment, & Forestry. Later came NH State Police, and KY State Police. Then I was transferred to Mot. Fed. Gov. division. I will finish with that within 1 week while on Mot. business in the UN, I visited 4U1UN (because I had a ham license) with the communications officer and then Lewisburg Fed. Prison. No ham radios in the prison, but I was tasked to design a 2-way system that would work in basements 3 levels down. Most happy that it was just a one day visit.

I am now very interested in SDR and have a SunSDR2 built by Expert Electronics in Russia. The User Interface is proprietary, but for the money I prefer an interface that is progressive, competitive and a performer. I expect to dive into some of the interesting below the noise floor digital communications (via WSJT-X) via my cheap $400 3 year old notebook.

The paddle shown in the picture is solid state. It was designed by 9A5N. Did you find the key in that picture? Being one of many hams that was outside of ham radio for a few decades, getting back and not remembering my old bad habits has given me the opportunity to develop new (bad) habits. In other words, I love this key. The paddles do not move at all. Therefore, I would not recommend it to anyone that has been using the typical paddle Jeff