Over the coming months on this venue I plan to present a variety of technical pieces and stories from nearly 70 years as an active ham. First, I want to introduce myself.

I was born in Pekin Illinois 82 years ago. I have lived in the Lower Rio Grande Valley for almost 35 years. I took early retirement from Caterpillar in 1989. I was a division manager at that time. I worked at various Caterpillar facilities in North America and Brazil during my 31 years with the company.

After retirement, I continued facilitating management training for Caterpillar and, with my late wife, Joyce, WB9NUL, did business as Custom Performance Systems, contracting training services to a number of North American organizations including the Chase Manhattan Bank, Canadian National Railway, K-Mart Corporation, Coors of Golden, Colorado, the State of Missouri Education Department, the United States Navy, the state of Illinois and a number of large medical facilities.

My involvement with electricity and electronics dates from my junior high days. My early experimenting led to an interest in radio and I got my ham license, W9UCW, in 1954 as a freshman in high school. I upgraded to the “extra” class and also obtained a First Class Commercial license. A few cohorts and I, over a period of 30 years, set up extensive research programs to sort out “conventional wisdom” from reality in the field of communications antennas. I taught electricity and electronics courses at the college level for many years, and was an invited lecturer at several colleges on the subject of communications antennas. I’ve given dozens of antenna presentations at clubs and conventions.

I published seven articles in QST and QEX that were republished in many other countries around the world. I also published several papers in the field of human performance engineering.

I’m now married to Linda, W5TRV, and we live just west of Santa Rosa on a rural blacktop. My primary operating activity is the same as it has been for the last 40 years…. casual DXing on 160 and 75 meters.

73, Barry