I was licensed at age-14, and hit the HF bands in 1954 as W7WVE. Quickly realizing that life’s too short for QRP, I took full advantage of the rich supply of inexpensive surplus electronics in the Seattle area. I’m amazed that my parents put up with the blinking lights and RF burns that resulted from my experiments in home brewing. The design criteria was simple: make it loud! My friends had a saying about ugly looking QRO: “they won’t know the difference in Europe”. In 1968, I moved to California and became W6ICJ. I brought my biggest and best QRO creations to the Bay Area, and proceeded to terrorize the 6’s on 20 meters.

After mastering HF (DXCC Honor Roll at age-24), I re-directed my zeal toward VHF, satellites and EME. The Oscar-10 was a great diversion from the low bands; one could even listen to one’s self while busting pileups! EME and weak signal work on 2 meters was lots of fun as well. At one point I had a 500 mile tropo range (with only 250KW ERP…”damn the mountains, full speed ahead”).

Now, I’m retired and living just east of Vista, Ca. I’ve backed-off a bit, and even run low power (under a KW) most of the time. Ham radio is a great hobby, and I’m looking forward to another fifty years of it !