I have always been interested in electronics. I used to take apart my mom's AM radios trying to figure out how they worked - without much success, nor was I able to put them back together again too well! In about the 6th grade I got a Radio Shack Electronics project kit and used it to learn the basics and most importantly, to build a crystal receiver, which I listened to until I'd drop off to sleep at night.

     In the 7th grade, I was the "audiovisual guy", delivering projectors to teachers and figuring out how to repair broken equipment (with a LOT more success at this point). My social studies teacher, who was the assistant principal who "supervised" my audiovisual work, brought in a Sony 1" helical reel-to-reel videotape recorder, and a matching camera, one microphone and a TV. I was tasked with making them work together, and my course in TV/radio was set!

     All through high school I messed around with the school's "TV station", some cobbled together black-and-white cameras, a couple of reel-to-reel VTRs and a tiny mixer with 3 or 4 old, old microphones. It was fun, though the teacher was a real idiot - a former shop teacher who somehow got "promoted" to teaching TV Production I and II.

     In college, I started hanging around WMUL-TV, the local PBS affiliate, housed on the campus of Marshall University, my alma mater.

     I guess WMUL got tired of me being underfoot, so they finally let me run camera for the Christmas childrens' shows which they produced for the local school districts. I also volunteered to travel - mostly to MU football games to videotape them for delayed playback in Huntington. It wasn't much fun, but eventually it paid off and I was HIRED! I was a Master Control Operator, running the on air operation for WMUL-TV from 4:00PM until sign off at midnight Monday through Friday. A perfect job for a college student. I studied about an hour and got my 3rd Class Radiotelephone Operators license so I could also work on air at WMUL-FM, the university's student run 10 watt FM station.

     Working from 4-midnight was great. I mean, how busy can you be when you switch one break every half-hour or so? I worked with two GREAT engineers, Pete, now K4OM, and Dwight, now N8HZ. They realized I wanted to learn, so they taught me. Of course, I couldn't do much since I was a lowly master control op, and even taking remote meter readings required an FCC First Class Radiotelephone Operators License. But I absorbed everything I could, and got a lot of hands-on with them over the course of the 18 months I worked at WMUL-TV (now WPBY-TV).

     We went to hamfests, worked on local AM and FM stations (usually in emergency conditions when their own chief engineers were unavailable), built ham gear, and refurbished our own test equipment. Mostly, I learned electronics by osmosis - Dwight and Pete knew more than anyone else about all the things I wanted to learn about!

    Finally, in the summer before my senior year at Marshall, I took the plunge and went to a "cram school" to get my First Class Radiotelephone Operators License. I passed the 2nd Phone and 1st Phone on the same day, July-something, 1979. An engineering position had been "promised" to me at WMUL as soon as someone left, and it wasn't too long before someone did. But EEO got me and a female was hired to fill the position because upper management thought there ought to be a woman in the engineering department, qualified or not (she wasn't). I lasted another few months before I was hired by Linc W7HIE, as a vacation replacement engineer at WHTN (now WOWK-TV) in Huntington. I worked about 6 different shifts, and nearly 7 days a week for 18 months more, through my senior year of college and the following summer. This was real TV, but I didn't get to do a lot of repair or maintenance, or much of anything but operate. Then the BIG BREAK came!

     Late in 1980, Linc moved to the little town of Petersburg, Virginia. WXEX-TV (now WRIC-TV) had split operations there and in Richmond (it's also consolidated into a facility about 2 miles from my house now). I was once again a Master Control Operator, but was quickly promoted to a maintenance position where I could actually use my 1st Phone license.

     On a visit back to Huntington Pete hustled me into a VE session and I passed the Novice exam, with 5wpm code. He'd decided I'd been putting it off long enough. Of course, I didn't do a thing with the Novice license, and it wasn't until 1986 that I went to a local VE exam session and took the Element 3 written exam. This made me a Technician "Plus". I promptly drove to HRO and purchased an Icom 2AT handie-talkie, a small amp for it, a Larsen antenna, and a few other accessories.

     In the meantime, I left WXEX and went to work for the US Army at Fort Lee, doing television production. No more midnight call-ins, no more lost weekends to emergency repairs, and NO MORE WINTER CLIMBS up the 1000' tower to repair recalcitrant high-intensity strobe lighting systems.

     Life at Ft. Lee was sloooooooow. You can only do so many shows on how to pack a parachute before you're more qualified than the instructors. I was with TV for a year, then went to work for the post engineers fixing all kinds of electronic stuff (for 18 months, then back to TV). It was on a typically sloooooooow day there that I finally got up enough nerve to send my call sign, now N4PAT, over the local repeater, 146.39/99, K4ARO/R. Imagine my surprise when SOMEONE ANSWERED ME! Tom W4APQ, was headed back to work at....yup...Ft. Lee.

     Thus began my REAL entry into ham radio! Tom, Carter K4ARO, George WA4GEF all became friends. I was very active in the Petersburg/Hopewell/Prince George area on 2 meters and 70 centimeters. Scouting introduced me to Henry N4HB and I contested with him and his crew a couple of years in a row in the June VHF/UHF QSO party from a mountaintop home just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I participated with the Hopewell/Prince George ARES group for a while and dabbled in packet radio and other VHF/UHF modes.

     Jobs came and went, and since 2002 I have been working for the Henrico County Public Schools as a Technology Support Technician. I joined the Richmond Amateur Telecommunications Society in November of 2004. I also finally decided it was time to upgrade. I started searching for proof of haing passed the Element 3 exam as a Technician. One evening in late March 2005 I stumbled across my CSCE from 1986 - in the very last place I looked: the filing cabinet in the HAM RADIO folder! I had already purchased a Yaesu FT-100D at Frostfest, and was rather anxious to get it on the air. The Richmond Amateur Radio Club VEs signed off on the paper upgrade in March 2005 and I was a GENERAL!

     Mike N4LSP helped me build and hoist a full wavelength 40 meter delta loop into the air behind my house. Now I am on the air on HF in style! Of course, within a few months I was tired of watching good DX on the cluster get away because it was in the Extra band segments. So I upgraded again. December 10, 2005 became the day I took my last FCC exam! So now I am chasing DX up and down the band. I hope to have my RigBlaster hooked up soon to experiment with HF digital modes, maybe, just maybe, I'll get the tower up out back before the end of time! If you want to see some fun, click here to take a look at my "Deconstructing Tower" story...

     I am also working on an online log. Give me some time, I code with 2 hammers and a chain saw!

MORE TO COME!

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