My first exposure to amateur radio came at around age 8. My father Henry (sk - WA2NLL) was getting into the hobby. He had been a transmitter attendant atop the Eiffel Tower during WWII. He started with an HT-37 and HQ-160. Talk about size !!. His 2 meter rig was a Gonset Communicator IV. Eventually he moved up to the Collins S line. He was very active in the hobby until he became ill in 1970. During the 10+ years he was on the air, he was on the committee of the 1964 World's Fair station, K2US (I still have their QSL cards), member of the Hudson Amateur Radio Council (HARC), as well as committee member for the 1964 ARRL convention (the one that Barry Goldwater attended) and 1966 HARC convention in Tarrytown. He was also very active with the New York Radio Club which used to meet at the George Washington Hotel in Manhattan.

I applied for my father's old callsign under the vanity program in June of 2005. I'm sure that he would have wanted it that way.

I passed the General theory on January 22nd, 2006 and the code on February 26th, 2006.

After holding a General class license for a little over 2 years, I upgraded to the Extra on March 23, 2008.

As of May, 2010 I am the Public Information Officer for the Long Island Mobile Amateur Radio Club (www.limarc.org) as well as editor of The LIMARC Log.

I retired from the Social Security Administration on September 1st, 2006 after 32 1/2 years of service. For the last 9 years I did IT work. My duties ranged from maintaining hardware, software, troubleshooting and repairing. If it had anything to do with systems, I was involved.

I set up my HF station in early November, 2006. I'm running a TS-570DG barefoot into an Alpha-Delta DX-EE hanging up in the backyard in an inverted vee. I enjoy DXing and have worked 85 countries as of April 6th, 2007. I also enjoy exchanging QSL cards. If I receive one from you, I will send you mine in exchange.

73 and good DX.

Rich