The handle here at K6VK is Bart -- xKV6LEE. The home QTH is Walnut Creek, CA, USA in the North East corner of grid square CM87, at 37^o55" N, -122^o 1" W in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Fifty years ago, Popular Electronics bestowed on me the "Cinderella" callsign WPE2DLT, and short wave radio has been my main hobby since those days. I made my first radio more than 50 years ago, using a razor blade and pencil lead detector, graduating to a three tube kit regenerative Allied Radio Ocean Hopper, then a Lafayette HE-10, then a war surplus NC-156, all great radios, especially for the great sunspot cycle 19. Radio remains for me a challenging, sometimes surprising, always interesting and pleasantly social avocation.

I operate AM when I can, and in October, 2010 Alex, KB6IDO and Tim, N6CC (both atop Mt Diablo) and I made maybe the first two meter AM contacts in California in many years, maybe decades. I often check into local VHF nets, mostly from Walnut Creek, sometimes from San Francisco.

My transceiver is an ICOM 7000, and for AM HF reception a 1936 Hallicrafters S-14 Sky Chief (with a green Magic Eye (!) for tuning) and a newly acquired Hallicrafters SX-73, in uniform as the R274D/URR. Most of the rest of my gear is ICOM (e.g., R-70 and R-2000), except for Yaesu HTs and a HAL Telereader for 'reading the mail' on RTTY. I enjoy a Grundig Satellit 800 and a Phillips D2999 ($3 at an estate sale) for short wave easy listening. My main antenna is an all-too-low 95 foot B&W broadband folded dipole, although my 2010 - '11 summer project has been the erection of an elevated Hustler 6BTV with a ground screen and many radials. Best DX (with the T2FD and 100 watts) is Russia (European and Siberian), Eastern Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Christmas Island (T32C). I collect old radios of various sorts from circa 1915 through the 1920s and 30s and WW II military gear, and some later transistor SW sets.

An interest in emergency services after the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 led me to get my amateur radio license a dozen years ago (presently Extra Class, now K6VK, formerly KV6LEE, and I hold an FCC Commercial license, GROL + RADAR, and a GMRS license). In September 2001, New York Red Cross put me to work using amateur radio for disaster relief from September 12 to September 20, as the night-shift "trick-chief" acting as the deputy to Jay Ferron, N4GAA (see Popular Communications, Sept. 2002 issue: [Lee] "9-11: Amateur Radio in New York"). I have served as the ARES Emergency Coordinator in the ARRL San Francisco Section for the City of San Francisco, and as Liaison Officer for the Auxiliary Communications Service of the City of San Francisco Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security (now Emergency Management). ARRL Pacificon has enlisted me in several presentations about amateur radio best practices in actual disaster recovery operations; in 2011 for EmComm for the Apocalypse: ElectroMagnetic Pulse, and I have presented a history of amateur radio emergency communications. Emergency services associations have permitted me to train as a First Responder Medic, as a member of my neighborhood Emergency Response Team, and in the Incident Command System to Level 200, and ARECC to Level III. Early service in the Civil Air Patrol showed me the value of such training; my 1963 Certificate of Proficiency is signed by General Curtis LeMay.

My academic interests include use of radio for intelligence work -- see [Lee] "Radio Spies -- Episodes in the Ether Wars," 15 Antique Wireless Association Review 7 (2002 -- available along with other radio history articles of mine at www.californiahistoricalradio.com). I am a Fellow of the California Historical Radio Society in History (2011) and work as the archivist at the CHRS KRE radio station Museum. My work in the preservation and history of vintage radio with the California Historical Radio Society led to its Herrold Award in 1991 and the Antique Wireless Association's Houck Award for Documentation in 2003. Last year the AWA Review (vol. 23) published an article of mine about Swan Island (KS4 land) and its wireless and radio history including CIA operations, 1954 through 1988; this year the Review published my article: "Wireless Comes of Age on the West Coast, 1899 -- 1920." I have also taught law and economics at Golden Gate University, including the economic history of telecommunications.

The 160 meter Marconi Beacon Experiment (winter, 2006) that I proposed to the Poldhu (Cornwall, UK) Amateur Radio Club and the Marconi Amateur Radio Club of Newfoundland is a focus of much of my recent interest in radio history. See [Lee, et al.] "The Marconi BeaconExperiment of 2006-07," 21 Antique Wireless Association Review 1 (2008), and "GB3SSS - Marconi's Transatlantic Leap Revisited," (by G0KYA) in QST, Dec. 2007. Keith Matthew, G0WYS and Joe Craig, VO1NA deserve the credit for making that experiment work.

A lawyer by trade, I have enjoyed an international practice (and radio around the world), see www.slksf.com, handling "Litigation, Mediation, Appeals & Deals." ^(SM) I presently serve as an ARRL Volunteer Counsel and as an ARRL Government Liaison. It was my privilege to present the seminar "Amateur Radio Operators and The Law" at the ARRL Pacificon conventions in 2008, 2010, and (with Chris Emlay, W3KD, ARRL General Counsel) in 2011. The presentations covered:

1) Federal Communications Commission; Antennas; Administrative Law; PRB-1 Pre-emption of Zoning: “Reasonable Accommodation”; California Law: the 2011Palmdale case.

2) Interference Issues; Primary and Secondary Users of Radio FrequencySpectrum; Part 15 and Broadcast over Power Lines (BPL) Update.

3) Repeater Issues; FCC Action; State Law Nuisance Actions;Interference Issues for Repeaters.

4) Representing the Radio Amateur – Know your Client; Credentialing your Client; Volunteer Counsel and Ethical Issues.

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The Photo below shows me at the controls in the KRE studio at the CHRS Museum in Berkeley, CA in June, 2011 during the ARRL East Bay meeting at KRE. American Graffiti immortalized this studio as Wolfman Jack's. CHRS has reconstructed it close to its appearance in that scene.

I invite correspondence at KV6LEE@gmail.com 73 de K6VK ##