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Must Be Amateur RadioPaul Williamson, KB5MU |
Must Be Art > Amateur Radio
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AMSAT has done some of the most exciting stuff in amateur radio today: amateur radio satellites. Yes, amateurs build their own spacecraft and put them in orbit. I've even helped with design, construction, and debug of several spacecraft myself. I was one of the control operators for one of them (AO-16). I established AMSAT's original web pages (replaced by new PHP-based pages in June 2004, and rebuilt again in 2013 using WordPress on a new server), and served as Vice President for Electronic Publication until AMSAT's reorganization of October 2004. |
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The San Diego Packet Radio Association is dead now, but I was involved from start to finish. |
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I served as webmaster for the Palomar Amateur Radio Club, the biggest general-interest amateur radio club in San Diego County, from 2002 through 2016. |
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I'm a member and supporter of ARRL, the national association for amateur radio. I hold an ARRL appointment as Technical Specialist, and serve several times a year as a volunteer examiner. |
See also my software page. Most of the software I've published is connected to amateur radio.
Summer 1977 | Novice license, WD5HFW |
May 1978 | Purchased my first rig, an Eico 753 (ugh), and put up a 40m dipole at my parents' house in Orange, TX |
April 1979 | Upgraded to General. Bought my first microphone (a beautiful Astatic D-104). |
June 1979 | Upgraded to Advanced. |
July 1979 | Received new callsign, KB5MU. |
August 1979 | Moved to Houston, TX for college. |
June 1981 | Purchased my first 2m FM rig, an ICOM IC-2AT handheld. |
July 1982 | Purchased my first decent HF rig, a Kenwood TS-830S. |
January 1983 | Upgraded to Extra (at the Houston FCC office) |
July 1983 | Started into digital communications with an AEA CP-1 computer interface for RTTY using a Commodore VIC-20 computer. I swore to myself that the computer was only for amateur radio. Oh yeah. |
January 1984 | Moved to San Diego, CA for work - apartment bound. Worked mostly 2m FM, including lots of traffic handling on the local net. |
February 1985 | Moved into a house (renting a room). |
April 1985 | Put up an HF antenna again, thanks to a cool landlord. |
September 1986 | Made my first satellite contact via RS-5. |
March 1988 | Made my first packet satellite contact on the FO-12 satellite BBS. |
October 1990 | Bought my first house. Room for antennas! |
since then... | Filled up the house with toys. |
Here's a picture of the antenna farm in San Diego before they all came down in 2004 for a house renovation project:
Visible, counterclockwise from the upper left:
Not visible is a chimney-mounted 2m/1.25m dual-band vertical.
That house is now rented out, so all those antennas are down. The new place is nominally covered by CC&R's that prohibit antennas, but there is no homeowner's association and thus no enforcement. No one has complained about my 43-foot vertical for HF with automatic antenna tuner at the base.