I was first licensed as WN4END in 1961 while a sophomore in high school. By early 1962 I passed my advanced and operated from my home in Nashville, Tennessee, until graduating from Georgia Tech with a BSEE in 1968 and an MSEE in 1972. While at Tech I was President of W4AQL and founded Georgia Tech's campus radio station, WREK-FM. Find Tech's mascot, Buzz, in the photo below!

I am the President of the Northern California DX Club for 2010-2012.

My Grandfather, George Bailey, was W1KH/W2KH, and President of ARRL from 1940-1952. He was President of IRE and Executive Secretary of IEEE. My Stepfather, Luke (Jack) H. Montgomery, was a ham off and on from the earliest days of radio, originally as W4ADF, and later WA4UDB until his death in 1998 at age 92. He was a pioneer in radio, the founder of WSM in Nashville in 1922, and engineered the first broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry in 1925. He was friends with Major Armstrong, the inventor of FM, and he built the first commercial FM station in 1938 with the only FM license ever personally granted by Armstrong to a third party.

After three years as an officer in the Navy aboard USS Newport News (CA-148), from which I operated as WA4END/mm at various times between 1968 and 1971, I returned to Nashville to work with South Central Bell and operated WA4END from there and from Birmingham, Alabama, until moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in December of 1975. As an Amateur Extra Class license, I immediately applied for a new call sign when ham radio vanity calls became available in 1977. I received my current call, N6RC, at that time.

My home in San Jose is 50 miles southeast of San Francisco in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley. The rig is an ICOM 756PROII, ACOM2000A amplifier, a 2-el SteppIR up 45' for 40M-6M, a G5RV up 35' for80M, a 160M dipole up 60 feet, and a home brew 1.8-Ghz AMD Athlon CPU running Windows XP. My logging software is the DXLab suite of applications authored by AA6YQ, and is in my opinion the best and most robust program suite for ham radio.

You  might enjoy reading QST, October 2005, pages 43-46, which is an article about our CQP expedition to Glenn County in 2004 with co-author, Kevin Rowett, K6TD, who is pictured above to my left at our 2008 CQP site in Monterey County, California.

My interests in ham radio include recruiting young people to ham radio (Radio Arcala), contesting, DXing, 40m/80m ragchewing, CW, and RTTY. I am President of the Northern California DX Club (NCDXC), www.ncdxc.org, a member of the Northern California Contest Club (NCCC), www.nccc.cc, and a Radio Arcala team member, www.RadioArcala.com.

My goals for retirement are to expand my contesting involvement, participate in as many DXpeditions as I can, and bring new licensees into the hobby. In the not too distant future you will likely find me hamming in Tucson, Arizona, where we have a home and plan to retire.

After 35 years in high tech, I am now an Investment Adviser Representative with Investment Advisors International and a realtor with Alain Pinel Realtors in Saratoga, California.My wonderful wife isKandis Rodda, who is also my partner in real estate, and we have two beautiful daughters, Courtenay, a graduate of Duke University,who is in the PhD program at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, and Kenna, a graduate of the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) who teaches and performs modern dance professionally and is a much sought after, certified Yoga instructor in San Diego.

73's,

Richard Crouch (Dick on CW)

N6RC

President, Northern California DX Club

ex-WA4END, Nashville, Tennessee!