I was born in 1946 and started playing with electronics at a very early age. My dad was great about taking time and explaining how things like magnetic fields are created and why I got jolted across the floor of his workshop when I placed an ohmmeter across a big transformer and then pulled the meter lead away while still touching the transformer wires! Even so he still encouraged my playing with and experimenting with various components often taking them apart to see what kind of magic was inside.

Dad helped me build a kit tube type battery radio when I was only six. I remember a piece of wood served as the chassis and it had to be coated with schelac before I could install the Fahnestock Clips to connect the components. My mother and father were both hams (W5DRI and W5DQK) since around 1951 so I grew up around ham radio. They would sometime communicate across the supper table using morse code. My brother, sister and I would not know what they were saying so we learned the code out of self defense.

I remember as my mother was working to upgrade to general, she had to learn to draw various circuits especially those of oscillators such as Armstrong, Hartley, Colpits, Pierce, etc. She learned how to draw the circuits by sewing a blue skirt and embroidering the schematics in white thread around the skirt in a similar fashion to the popular poodle-skirt.

It was much later after a tour in the Navy that I became licensed as WN5JCX in 1973. A bit later I upgraded to Advanced then Extra receiving the serial issue call AG5Z. I have been active in many facets of amateur radio including RTTY, DX, fox hunting, teaching ham radio classes, and a lot of emergency operations preparation and operations. I currently serve as the ARRL DEC for southeast MS.My XYL,Sylvia, is now KE5YBV and my oldest daughternow has mom's W5DRI callsign.

The current station is a modest one but care and attention to detail seems to have it working well for me. The primary rig is a Kenwood TS-2000 with various other rigs available as backups including my trusty old Drake TR-7 that I bought shortly after they came out in the 70s. The antenna system consists of a Tennadyne T-10 at 70 feet for 30 through 6 meters. I know it is only listed as 13 to 33 mhz but mine worksfine on 6 and okay on 30 as well. I use a 2000 foot loop on the low bands and even on the upper ones when I need something less directional than the beam. There is a Tennadyne T-28, 100mhz to 1.3 ghz, up above the T-10 for VHF/UHF work. Various station photos are posted on www.ag5z.com in case you are interested.