Geoff Mendenhall was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and has been an active amateur radio operator for 50 years.

He was first licensed as KN3VLN in 1961 while he was still in Junior High School in Johnstown, PA. Geoff enjoys the technical side of amateur radio and has built much of his equipment. He built his first novice CW rig using an 807 tetrode and a power supply made out of parts from a television set. Later, with some help from Bill Orr, W6SAI, he designed and built a 6 meter band, VHF linear amplifier using an Eimac 4-400A tetrode operating in a cathode driven configuration as a high school science fair project that took him all the way to the national JETS science fair in New York City. While still in High School, Geoff got his First Class Radiotelephone license so he could work as a broadcast technician at WJAC, the local television station.

While attending the Georgia Institute of Technology as an electrical engineering student, Geoff designed, hand built, and FCC type accepted, a 425 Watt FM broadcast transmitter for WREK, the Georgia Tech student FM station. http://www.techatl.com/wrek/docs/gnm_0011.htm . He was also active at W4AQL, the Georgia Tech Amateur Radio Club. After graduation from Georgia Tech with an electrical engineering degree, Geoff worked for the Comco division of E.F. Johnson designing two way radio communications equipment.

In 1973, Geoff moved to Quincy, Illinois and began designing broadcast equipment for the Gates Radio division of Harris Corporation. He changed his call sign from K3VLN to W9NEZ in 1973 and spent the next 26 years designing broadcast equipment for Harris and Broadcast Electronics in Quincy. While living in Quincy, Geoff experimented with the optimization of full size, monoband, Yagi antennas. He also upgraded the second HF linear amplifier that he originally built in High School.

Geoff's other favorite hobbies are sailing and SCUBA diving. In the mid 1980's, Geoff combined amateur radio and SCUBA diving in the Cayman Islands operating as ZF2CQ. He enjoyed being on the other end of pileups while operating amateur radio from the Cayman Islands.

Geoff holds eight US Patents for innovations to broadcast equipment. In 1999 he received the National Association of Broadcasters Radio Engineering Achievement Award for his significant contributions to FM broadcast transmitter technology and in 2008 he was named a Harris Fellow. More than 10,000 FM broadcast exciters in operation around the world utilize technology developed by him. He is member of the ARRL, The Greater Cincinnati Amateur Radio Association (GCARA), a senior member of the IEEE, and a Registered Professional Engineer.

Geoff moved to the Harris Broadcast Communications headquarters located in Cincinnati, Ohio where he is Vice President of Transmission Research and Technology, for the next generation of digital radio and television transmitter systems. http://www.broadcast.harris.com

After moving to Ohio, he said farewell to W9NEZ, his ham call for 28 years and got the new call sign W8GNM. His QTH in Cincinnati has restrictions on antennas, so he is now optimizing his "stealth" wire antenna array. He currently operates using an ICOM 756 Pro-II + his home brew linear amplifier feeding vertical wire antennas with elevated, resonant, radials for the 160m, 80m, 40m bands and J-Pole wire antennas for 20m, 17m, 15m, 10m and 2m. His Saturn-6 Halo antenna from his high school days is still in operation on 6m. A home brew, bi-directional, Beverage antenna and a rotatable loop antenna help with weak signal reception. Geoff enjoys modeling and optimizing his antennas with EZNEC software. He uses a dedicated ham radio computer with TRX-Manager CAT software to control his rig, handle station logging, and to implement digital waveform demodulation via a 12kHz IF interface he added to the ICOM 756 Pro-II.

Geoff is co-manager of the Greater Cincinnati Amateur Radio Association, 1936KHz, net which meets every Thursday evening at 9PM Eastern Time. Although he is currently limited to small, wire, antennas, you can hear him on 160m through 2m from his Cincinnati QTH or mobile using his ICOM 706MK-II when he is on the road or sailing on lake Erie. He also operates "portable 8" from Catawba Island (US Islands - OH016L, Grid EN81no) on the West end of lake Erie near Port Clinton, Ohio (N 41⁰ 35’ 00” , W 82⁰ 50’ 35” or 41.583⁰ N, 82.843⁰ W)

W8GNM/8 Catawba Island Shack

Geoff's wife and daughter also have their amateur radio licenses.

PSE QSL via Logbook of the World (LOTW) at http://www.arrl.org/lotw/ OR via eQSL.