Have been licensed and continuously active since October 1955; first as KN6OJV, then W7HQJ, and most recently as W7FU in honor of a mentor, Gordon Norris. The previous call holder of W7FU, a good friend and Elmer, Gordon Norris, is now a silent key. Gordon's place as a friend and Elmer has been taken by Steve Buroker, W7QC.

Married with 3 children, 2 grandchildren and have lived in the same QTH for almost 40 years. We like to garden, entertain, camp, ocean kayak and bicycle travel. At the present, I enjoy preparing and driving my MINI Cooper S in regional track events and, of course, ham radio. Am a semi-retired practicing physician and remain active in hospital affairs.

Am active with our local radio club, Radio Club of Redmond, N7KE. The Club bands together for fellowship, Elmering and to operate QRP and other operating events / contests. Very gratifying to see the Club grow over the years and provide support to the local hams. Would encourage other hams to organize local clubs of their own and enjoy the fun that comes from getting together around a common interest.

My radio activity started out with QRP as a novice, a 6V6 on a wooden chassis,and moved on through modifying surplus and homebrew receivers and transmitters. These last 30 years, my activity has spanned AO6, AO7, and AO8 satellites as well as the HF bands. Stopped building analog rigs about 20 years ago but have recently resumed building digital radios with computer interfaces. At present, I am working hard to improve my operating skills, with CW as the preferred mode. My current operating interest is limited to the HF bands and enjoy DX as well as non-DX QSO's. Want to return to satellite operation when communication satellites become available again.

Have resumed building and now operate an experimenter's station built around Software Defined Radio (SDR). My first SDR rig was a Genesis 40 QSD style SDR transceiver platform modified for multiband operation. In essence, an updated version of the classic Flex 1000 transceiver, which itself is a landmark design. These SDR's use the very mature and stable Power SDR software from FlexRadio. The Genesis transceiver is off the air and my current rig is a second generation SDR using RF sampling technology which I have also built.

The second generation SDR, the one that I am using on the air, is an experimenter's homebrew transceiver built around the basic HPSDR digital down conversion (DDC) receiver and HPSDR digital up conversion (DUC) transmitter boards, both available from TAPR. This rig also operates on a modified version of the open source Power SDR software and puts out up to100 watts all modes on all the HF bands. The transition to the HPSDR architecture of digital down conversion (DDC) and digital up conversion(DUC), to realize an SDR transceiver, is an advanced and fascinating marriage of analog radio technology and computer defined digital signal processing. See this link for more information; http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=A_Basic_HPSDR_Transceiver_in_PANDORA

What began as a limited project to build an experimenter's SDR rig, has evolved to become a fully integrated computerized SDR based ham station. Using readily available ham radio logging/station controlsoftware and a basic PC, it is now possible to perform all of the station control, logging, and operating functions from a keyboard and a touch pad. No knobs or switches. Quite a different radio world from the traditional ham station of my youth.

The current equipment lineup is the HPSDR transceiver at 40W, and a modified Drake L-4B linear amplifier. Antennas include a dipole for 80 meters and yagi's for 40 thru 10 meters.

Always interested in a rag chew and the opportunity to meet and correspond with hams who are technically minded or just have questions. 73