First licensed in 1962 while in high school (Livermore CA) as WN6BID upgraded to General in 1963 and became WB6BID . really good CW call sign! Graduated from San Jose State Univ in 1970 and was immediately drafted. To avoid indentured servitude in the Army, I "volunteered" for the Navy. That turned out to be a life saver in more ways than one. Since I knew a little CW, I was sent to radio school. After listening to CW 8 hrs/day 5 days/week I got up to 24 WPM and ran down to the FCC in San Diego and upgraded to Extra. My first (and only) duty station was NCS Philippines (NPO) where I worked as a RTTY and CW op for three years. I met my wife there, got married and we had our first child, Anna in 1971. That same year I "retired" from the Navy and tried to get my carear started in Electrical Engineering. However, no company would hire me since I was out of school for four years and had no experience. Thus, I went back to San Jose State and got an MSEE degree. Since then I havn't had any trouble finding work. I was QRT since high school. About 1980 I got interested in the hobby again and bought a QRP rig (Argonaut 509) and started chasing DX with 5W and a low dipole. That was pretty discouraging so I built an amp with a 4CX1500B that took the 5W up to 1500W. That was better. Next I installed a roof mount TH3 and the world opened up. It was great! A few yrs later I ran the city permit gauntlet and put up a 72' crank-up. The present station is an FT1000mp, Alpha 87A, and Icom 756Pro3 for SO2R. Antennas are a 40CD2 and C31XR. With a better station, I got bored chasing DX and started contesting. I still havn't won a contest and don't really expect to, but I find it very challanging. The Northern California Contest Club has given me years of help and commradare (see: http://www.nccc.cc) I took over the administration of the California QSO Party until 2005 (see http://www.cqp.org) Part of the TI9M expedition (see http://www.qrz.com/ti9m). Co-organizer of K7C Kure expedition (see http://www.cordell.org/kure).