My Amateur Radio career began in 1981 when I discovered a copy of the Radio Amateur's Handbook at the college library. After practicing morse code for a year in my spare time with 2 children under the age of three, I passed the Novice exam on my second attempt at the written element.

   Holding the call of KA1IOR ever since, I spent the next 14 months upgrading to Extra, making repeated trips to the FCC's Custom House in Boston. On the first attempt, I upgraded from Novice to General. When I looked at the materials for Advanced and Extra, I decided to just do them both. I passed the Advanced theory test and the 20 wpm code, but missed the Extra theory by just a few questions, and passed it on the next session instead. I have enjoyed the privilege of serving fellow Amateurs as a Volunteer Examiner since the inception of the VE system, and I am a Life Member of the American Radio Relay League.

   It was my privilege to serve the community in August of 1991 as Net Control in a coordinated response with Falmouth's Office of Emergency Preparedness during Hurricane Bob, which left many of the roads impassable with downed trees and much of Cape Cod without electricity for over a week. The storm was responsible for 18 lives lost (3 on Cape Cod), and damages were 1.5 billion dollars. Over 2 million homes lost electricity. I also currently serve the community in another public safety related capacity.

   I have served as Net Control and elsewhere in the Falmouth Road Race to support the emergency medical service needs of this world-class running event since 1984, and ran the seven mile course as a participant in 1997 in less than an hour. Not exactly a world-class speed, but maybe respectable enough for a non-runner. I have also served as Net Control for the Cape Cod Marathon.

   In 1988 and 1991 I placed first in the Eastern MA High Power CW category of the November Sweepstakes contests. In the SSB portion of 1991 I worked a clean sweep, contacting every section in the U.S. and Canada in less than 24 hours of operating time. I have served as Secretary for the Falmouth ARA for over 5 years and as Field Day Leader in 1991 and 1992.

   I was one of less than 700 lucky operators to successfully uplink one-way via Packet Radio to Ron Parise, WA4SIR during the flight of Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-35/ASTRO-1 mission in December of 1990. Later in 1992 I made a complete two-way QSO among less than 1000 others to successfully make a contact with Jay Apt, N5QWL and Mamoru Mohri, 7L2NJY aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour during STS-47. Photo courtesy of Jay himself! More recently, I made a two-way voice contact with the International Space Station, NA1SS in December 2008.

   My current activities center mainly on VHF/UHF, serving at exam sessions, and helping out at Field Day as needed. CW is still my favorite mode, and my HF operating is finally recovering to normal activity now that I am no longer subject to a landlord's restrictions. I am active on APRS, and maintain live weather updates via packet, as a registered participant of the CWO Program. You can see my current weather information here. I created the charts using a perl script I wrote to collect the data from the weather station and paint the images using fly.