First licensed as a Novice Class operator, KA5MWD (stationed with USAF in Biloxi, MS) November of 1981; General Class licensee, N1CLS (home Lowell, MA but still stationed in Biloxi) July of 1982; Advanced Class licensee, KB1LW (Biloxi) August of 1983; Stationed in Portsmouth, NH from 1985-1989 as KB1LW; licensed in the Republic of Korea in 1989-1990 as HL9ZF. Earned the Amateur Extra Class license, WK1V (stationed in Alamogordo, NM) in October 1990. W6ZF in 2001 in Dracut, MA. W1KQ in 2007 in Dracut, MA.

PREVIOUS CALL SIGNS: KA5MWD, N1CLS, KB1LW, WK1V, W6ZF

HL9ZF - Republic of South Korea (US Air Force Stationed Overseas 1989-1990)

FAVORITE HF ACTIVITY:

Contesting - Who says you can't meet a lot more hams in short quick QSO's?

And why should anyone care if everyone is 59 or 5NN? It's only a hobby.and a service!

ORGANIZATIONS I BELONG TO:

American Radio Relay League

Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Billerica Amateur Radio Society (W1HH)

3936 Amateur Radio Group

Ham Radio Outlet Amateur Radio Club (K1HRO)

Quarter Century Wireless Association (#33626)

10-10 International (#35376)

OM Intenational Sideband Society-OMISS (#6449)

Straight Key Century Club (#2058)

Croation Telegraphy Club (#1598)

AWARDS:

ARRL Worked All States May 1983 #39,203 CW Endorsement contacts worked from Biloxi, MS

Below WAS contacts worked from Portsmouth, NH--Lowell, MA--Dracut, MA

WAS Basic Feb 2009 (LoTW) #53,482

WAS CW March 2009 (LoTW)

WAS Phone April 2009 (LoTW)

WAS 20 Meters August 2010(LoTW)

WAS RTTY August 2010 (LoTW)

****ARRL Triple Play Award #249 April 2009 (LoTW)****

ARRL DX Century Club #41,731

DXCC Mixed Jan 2008 (LoTW)

DXCC 20 meters Dec 2008 (LoTW)

DXCC CW Jan 2009 (LoTW)

DXCC Phone April 2009 (LoTW)

DXCC 40 meters Jan 2011(LoTW)

DXCC 15 meters Feb 2011(LoTW)

Contest Awards:

1st Place ARRL November Sweepstakes Single OpUnlimited PhoneEastern Massachusetts Section 2004

1st Place ARRL November SweepstakesSingle Op Unlimited PhoneEastern Massachusetts Section 2007

1st Place ARRL November SweepstakesSingle Op Unlimited PhoneEastern Massachusetts Section 2008

1st Place ARRL November SweepstakesSingle Op CW Eastern Massachusetts Section 2009

4th Place New England QSO Party Middlesex County Massachusetts, Single Operator High Power, 2008

3rd Place New England QSO Party Middlesex County Massachusetts, Single Operator High Power, 2009

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All my logs get uploaded to eQSL.cc and LoTW. I prefer electronic QSL's and don't need anymore paper.

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For DX stations.I apologize as I have a lot of catching up to do for paper DX QSL's.

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In August of 1981, while stationed with the U.S. Air Force at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, I took a Novice class instructed by Paul Goble.then WA2VMS.I passed the Novice exam at the K5TYP club station. My Novice ticket arrived in the mail in early December 1981. Look at how short a time it is nowadays to get your ticket after you pass the exam.

My first call sign was KA5MWD (Mississippi Water Department or War Department depending on what day of the week it was). After my wife gave birth to twins.W5SGL (Walt Daniels-now SK [One of the nicest hams I ever met]) dubbed me as "Many Wet Diapers." I definitely had to get a call sign change after that. hi hi. Walt's wife, Miss Bea (WD5JXT) also now SK, is right at the top of the list as one of the nicest hams I had ever met. During my first non-assisted QSO.KA5NAL, Aisnlie Phillips, (SK in 1985) broke in and passed along his phone number and asked me to call him after the QSO. We lived only a few miles apart. We became fast friends and helped one another learn enough to upgrade our tickets.

My General Class ticket came eight months after getting my Novice ticket. I passed the exam at the FCC Office in New Orleans after a 75 mile drive from Biloxi. I attempted and would have passed the 20 wpm code test at the same sitting but since I had only scheduled to take the General Class exam the examiner would not accept the 20 wpm exam for credit. So, Ieasily passedthe 13 wpm exam during the same sitting.uh.(Go Figure). anyway I walked out with the call sign KA5MWD Interim Oscar Romeo. I received N1CLS for myGeneral class call sign a short time later. (My home of record then was Lowell, MA.)

My Advanced Class exam was held at the same FCC office in New Orleans in 1983.not so good on the first attempt.but.the second try was successful. You had to wait 30 days then before you could test again. So there had to be a second 75 mile drive. I later received the call sign KB1LW. I took that call sign with me to Pease Air Force Base in Portstmouth, New Hampshire in 1985.

The Air Force sent me to Osan Air Base in the Republic of Korea in May of 1989. The call sign assigned to me there was HL9ZF and I became a member of the American Amateur Radio Club of Korea.the AARCK and I became a Volunteer Examiner for the ARRL VEC. Just before leaving for my next duty assignment stateside I passed the 20 WPM Code test. I didn't fare so well on the Amateur Extra Class written exam at that session.

In October of 1990, at Holloman Air Force Base, in Alamogordo, NM I made an attempt at the Amateur Extra Class written exam again. It took me two days and two tries at the local HamFest VE Exam session. I had to get the math down to finally pass the exam. My wife obtained her Technician license shortly afterward and received the call sign, N1MBV.

Later my call sign WK1V arrived in the mail. N1MBVinformed me via landline that a letter had arrived from the FCC. I asked her to open it and tell my my new call sign. So myfirst use of WK1V was on 2 meters from the airport in Phoenix, AZ where I was waiting for a connecting flight to Denver on my way to a frequency management seminar at Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1993, after 20 years of service, I retired from the U.S. Air Force and moved to my wife's home town of Lowell, Mass. We moved into her father's house. Six years later we purchased our own home in the next town over, Dracutwhere we've lived ever since.

My Uncle Ron, "The Colonel" (USAF Retired), who for many years held the call sign W6ZF passed away in 1999. We hadn't written in a little while so I found out when I saw his name under the SK column in QST. I called my Aunt Francis to get the whole story. Uncle Ron and I didn't get to see each other much but occasionally we spoke over the airand frequently by telephone. We corresponded via the U.S. Mail from the time I was 14 years old and on the opposite coast of the U.S. Uncle Ron loved to write. Regrettably, we didn't get to communicate much during the last couple of years of his life.my busy schedule. In 1989 while awaiting my military port call from Oakland, to go to Korea, I did manage to pay a visit to the QTH of W6ZF in Napa. He was on two meters when Aunt Francis brought me into the shack. Later Uncle Ron shared a can of Campbell's Minestrone soup with me.his fave and mine. As I was readying to leave, for what ended up being the last time we would see each other, he wouldn't let me go without his giving me several bottles of some good Christian Brothers wine. I drank the bottle of Johannesburg Riesling myself (not in one sitting mind you) and gave the other bottles to my brother in Fulsom and to my mother in Sacramento.

Being a California native I decided it would be nice to get his 6-land call to keep it in the Martin family after he passed. The family was happy about that. I applied for and received it. But later, having a recreational insterest in CW contesting I began having some issues with so many dits in the call sign, (dah-dah-didit didihdahdit); and, being in "1" land there were some drawbacks especially in VHF DX'ing and contesting. So, I applied for and got my old call sign.WK1V. Two years later I reapplied for the W6ZF call.man. that did not sit very well with the over zealous call sign cops. But that's a whole other story. Hi hi.

When the cw dit issue cropped up again, as I was becaming more active in contesting, my message to the local reflector engendered a helpful response from K1RV, Pi. He suggested "W1KQ" and a couple of other call signs I might cultivate from the SK pool. W1KQ was still a valid call sign in the FCC database but the previous holder had been SK for more than two years. I took action to have the license canceled and applied for it. The call W1KQ was granted to me on February 9, 2007.

I did have a private chat with "The Colonel" (Uncle Ron) about giving up his W6ZF call sign. All is okay. It has since been issued to a non-Martin ham radio operator. Congratulations to him on a great call sign.W6ZF. "Zipper Flipper." The original holder was involved in a lot of historical radio operations including the transmissions that essentially helped end World War II. The story relayed to me was that General McArthur was looking for a way to let the Japanese soldiers in the field know that the hostilities had ended. A U.S. Army major advised him there was an Army communications major involved heavily in communications and that he might have some ideas. They contacted Uncle Ron who was aware that the Japanese fighters listened to the U.S. weather transmissions. His idea was to broadcast the message over those frequencies.thus pretty much helping to end WWII. I was also advised that the microphone he used was a part of his shack until he passed away and it was offered to the museum at Point Magoo Naval Air Station. I hope to make it out there sometime to see it.

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STATION: Yaesu FT-1000D (It's actually a C+ as it was a plain FT-1000 until I added the BPF-1 and some filters including the INRAD Roofing Filter. It just doesn't have the TCXO-1 that the regular D model has. If I hadn't told you then you would have never known. (This is my primary HF rig). Other rigs: FT-1000MP Mark V; Kenwood TS-2000 (Primary VHF/UHF rig) Has built-in TNC for SkyCommand Control; Icom IC-7000 (Primary Mobile Rig); Drake TR-7 (Old Standby); Johnson Viking II (Nastalgic Novice TXMTR) with Hallicrafters SX-100 RXCVR; Icom IC-2800 Dual Band Mobile Rig; Icom IC-25H 2 Meter Mobile Rig; Icom IC-2200H with IC-UT118 (2 Meter DStar Rig); Icom ID-800 Dual Band DStar Mobile Rig; Icom IC-91AD Dual Band DStar HT; IC-92AD Dual Band DStar HT; DV Dongle.DStar computer device; Yaesu FT-530 Dual Band HT; Icom IC-T21 2M TXCVR/70CM RXCVR HT; Kenwood TH-D7A Dual Band HT with built-in TNC for SkyCommand; Alinco DJ-580 Dual Band HT, Kenwood TH-D72 Dual Band HT with GPS and TNC built-in for APRS and SkyCommand; HF Amplifiers: Ameritron AL-811H with 4 Taylor 572B Tubes; Ameritron AL-1200. TU: Microham Microkeyer (Primary with FT-1000D); RigBlaster Plus, RigBlaster Advantage.

Digital Software: MixW v2.20, N1MM Logger with MMTTY, Ham Radio Deluxe

Antennas:

Cobra design dipole. Each leg is 82 feet of 12 AWG Romex. I call this the Anaconda.

Cushcraft X-9 Tri-Band 9-Element Log Cell at 48'

Homebrewed 6-Element 6 meter Yagi on 20' boom (Not currently up)

Homebrewed 40 Meter Bi-Directional Moxon (Not currently up)

5 Element 2 Meter Quad

1 Cushcraft 13B2 2m Yagi Horizontally mounted.

1 M2 EB144 2-Meter EggBeater Satellite Antenna

1 M2 EB432 70cm EggBeater Satellite Antenna

TX-438 38' Tilt-over/Crank up tower by U.S. Tower

The original Anaconda [no longer in use thanks to my 160m 1500 watt operations] my own design of the Cobra Linear Loaded Dipole-Oriented toward Europe - 168 feet long vs 140 feet long. Each leg is 84 feet long and fed with 100 feet of 450 ohm ladder line to an MFJ-912 4:1 Balun and 20 feet of RG-213 from there to an Alpha Delta coax switch in the shack to the Palstar AT5K transmatch. I do plan to rebuild the antenna with the leftover Romex. The antenna will be roughly 164 feet long when I put it back up. No more 1500 Watt 160 meter operation though.,

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Can befound occasionally on the WB1GOF D-Star DV Repeater -- Port C

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USAF Senior Air Traffic Controller AFSC: 27270 (1973-1987)

USAF Communications-Computer Systems Program Management Technician AFSC: 49670 (1987-1993)

RETIRED from the United States Air Force in1993

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