I currently work at the Luminant, Martin Lake Power plant near Tatum, Texas as the NERC/CIP Coordinator. NERC stands for North American Electric Reliability Corporation and CIP stands for Critical Infrastructure Protection. Basically what NERC/CIP is all about is ensuring that we meet all the required regulations to ensure that our electrical power production facility is secure and protected from any malicious physical or cyber attacks. I have been in this position since May of 2012 and it has proved to be very interesting. Prior to my current job I worked at the same power plant (formally TXU Electric) as a Safety Specialist for five years. I worked as an Instrumentation and Controls Technician (electronics technician) at the plant for 25 years before moving over to the Safety Department in 2007.
I am active on the HF bands, and on the local 2 meter repeater. Recently I put up a 10 element Cushcraft 2 meter horizontal beam and have been having a lot of fun working 2 meter SSB contacts. There are several local (50 to 200 miles) stations I have worked on 144.200 and 144.250 MHz. While I was installing the 2 meter beam on the tower I also put up a tri-band, Cushcraft HF Yagi for 10, 15 and 20 meters. This has made working HF DX stations a lot more fun! This past January, 2012 I finally up-graded to Amateur Extra class so now I can work on all of the spectrum allocated to US Amateur operators. The local Henderson, TX. repeater (sponsored by the Henderson Rescue Unit) is on 146.780 MHz., with a 131.8 Hz tone. It is an open repeater with coverage over most of Rusk and surrounding Counties. If you are ever in the Henderson, TX. area or just passing through, give me a call on the repeater. Currently on HF I am using a Yaesu 857D all-mode transceiver driving an Ameritron ALS-500M solid-state amp running around 300 Watts into either an inverted vee, inverted "L" or the HF beam. I'm using Ham Radio Deluxe to control the transceiver which is a pretty slick program. On 2 meters, (FM and SSB) and 70 cm I am using a second Yaesu FT-857 transceiver and controlling it with Ham Radio Deluxe from a second computer in my shack. Both of my base transceivers and the ALS-500M amp are powered from 2 deep cycle, 12 Volt batteries charged by a solar panel during day light hours. This arrangement has worked well for me and gives me an alternate power source that can keep me on the air if the commercial power should fail. Received vanity call KN5G on January 15, 2013. This should be fun after using kb5nxw for over twenty years !!!

When I am not on the radio I enjoy gardening, metal detecting, and fishing.  I recently decided to try my hand at Honey Bees.  I have two hives right now. One I bought and one I caught as a swarm.  I have a pretty steep learning curve ahead of me to become a bee keeper but so far I have enjoyed working with them. They are pretty amazing little insects.

Hope to meet you on the air one day!
73, Keith KN5G (formally KB5NXW)

Large Visitor Globe

Here is a picture of me and Jon, NU5G, working the Texas VHF-FM Society Simplex Challenge on December 11, 2011 as multi-op, mobile rover. We were both really suprised when we won the "Low Power, multi-op, rover" category! The 10 element YAGI antenna allowed us to work stations 150 miles away in the Dallas, Ft. Worth area with only 10 watts! Pretty amazing what you can do on simplex with low power and big antennas.