Category: Featured Member Profiles

  • Featured Member Profile: Kiri KF7KAH

    My ham adventures began in December 2012 when I passed my tech exam with an initial goal of getting on the air to do HF. I passed my General ticket the very next month and shortly thereafter made my first DX contact to Lithuania. Not too long after I received my call sign I was in an EMCOM class at PCC and James Bryant came in to give a talk about ARES. I went to the next monthly meeting and the rest is history.

    I’ve been on again off again with electronics in general since I was a wee one, but got back into circuits and things back in 2002ish when I started working on some interactive art projects. Ham radio seemed like a natural progression.

    Aside from participating in ARES activities, I like to do Summits on the Air, surf the HF bands when I have the time, and try out all the digital modes I can figure out. I also carry my 2m handheld everywhere, and enjoy making contacts on the road and trails. My goals for the summer are to upgrade to Extra class, and actually design and mail out some contact postcards.

    I grew up in the Chicago burbs, and have been in PDX since 2005 after moving here from Brooklyn, NY. After 10 years in web production, web start up life and a short stint as an aquatic ecologist, I’ve been freelancing in web production and print design for the past 7-odd years.

    Last year I returned to school full time. Currently I’m a post-BACC student in Geology with minor in mathematics at PSU and an Emergency Management Cert student at PCC. I originally returned to school to focus on volcanology and volcanic hazard & landslide mitigation, but I recently fell down a geodynamics worm hole, so who knows where I’ll end up next.

    Aside from school, I’m also a staff member of the Experimental Film Fest Portland. We just put on our 3rd successful festival and were awarded a Precipice grant this year from PICA and the Andy Warhol Foundation. In the minuscule amount of free time I have left I do experimental animation, hike, camp, bicycle and otherwise enjoy adventure time in the land between art and science. I’ve lived off rapidly changing NE Alberta Street for the past seven years with my partner and our two cats. As you may imagine the weed jungle around our house is substantial!

  • Featured Member Profile: John K7TY

    I’m the guy on the trike. Bicycling and ham radio are my things.

    My radio career began when my high school shop teacher started a radio club back in 1965. We had to pass the Novice ticket to get an A in the class. This was also the high time of Heathkit. I learned how to solder building an HW-8 and an SB-line station once I upgraded to General. I rarely operated since I couldn’t put up much of an antenna at home but I built and built and built. I convinced a lot of the neighbors and relatives to get Heathkit stereos which I built for them (for a small fee, of course). After high school, all this led to a couple of electrical engineering degrees (and an Extra ticket) and lots and lots of operating at university club stations when I really should have been studying. Back then I operated mostly low power QRP CW.

    After graduation, a job with Intel got me to the west coast. Easy access to microprocessor chips (8080 and 8048 families) with cosmetic defects allowed me to build some of the first microprocessor-based RTTY and CW equipment (all in assembly language). When CPM (an early microprocessor operating system) came out I jumped into programming. This led to a job in Intel’s microprocessor group in the 8086 days right before IBM announced the IBM PC. In the late 70s I volunteered for a 2-year European assignment in Brussels. It was fun being on the other end of pile-ups for a change (as an ON8). The job meant a lot of traveling all over Europe so I didn’t operate as much as I would have liked.

    After Europe came Portland (the weather is similar). I operated the digital modes (RTTY and packet) almost exclusively and wrote a number of packet-based database applications such as a SwapNet BBS system. Then kids happened. And I went back to school for a teaching degree, taught for a couple of years and then started an Internet business. Ham radio went to the back burner. Even so, there was always a VHF radio in the car, an HF radio on the desk and a handheld in the back pack. Fast-forward 15 years and semi-retirement allowed me to blow the dust out of the old radios. An interest in emergency communication led to an intersection of ARES and Red Cross. Current projects are getting the radio shack off the grid, improving the bicycle mobile setup and getting everyone in the house licensed.

  • Featured Member Profile: Deb KK7DEB and Eli W7ELI

    When we joined the Corbett NERT team in 2005, the group was in desperate need of ham radio operators. We signed up with the Clark County Amateur Radio Club for technician class. We walked out of the exam with our PASS slips and wondered, “Now what?” Off we went to HRO pleading total ignorance of all things electronic but professing an interest in emergency communications. The very patient salesman recommended a Yaesu VX6R HT. We each bought one and they turned out to be a good choice.

    The CCARC put us to work right away, partnering us with an experienced ham, Jack (now a silent key) for the Diabetes Walk. We quickly learned that a rubber ducky antenna doesn’t get very far, so back to HRO for a quarter-wave for the HTs and a mag mount for the car.

    The only ham we knew was our friend Jerry who lives on San Juan Island. A little experimenting with linked repeaters and we were talking almost to Canada! We scanned the two meter band listening to anything we could find and stumbled on the Northwest Traffic and Training Net. We listened a long time and learned the basics of message handling, then finally got up the courage to check in and try sending a message to Jerry. Back to HRO. 5 watts even with a better antenna still wouldn’t get us out of Corbett. But 50 watts did! We grew up as hams on the NTTN.

    However, we still wanted to get into emergency communications. We went to a couple of Multnomah County ARES meetings but there were only three or four other folks in attendance and there was no apparent training going on. At the EmComm Conference in Seattle we met David Kidd KA7OZO, then EC for Clackamas County and District 1 EC. He encouraged us to come to Clackamas County and we were again put to work on drills, SETS, and public service events. We upgraded to General class in 2008 so we would be able to operate HF at a served agency if needed.

    When Multnomah County got a new EC in 2009, Dave asked us to help rejuvenate the group, so we returned to our home county ARES to see what we could do. Three years ago we moved from Corbett to Fairview and left the NERT team behind. Now all our volunteer time and energy is devoted to Multnomah County ARES. It has been so exciting to be a part of the growth and development of this great team of hams. We are fast becoming the best in the state thanks to the entire leadership team and all of you!

  • Featured Member Profile: Adam KF7LJH

    For me the path down the dark side started with two simultaneous events early in 2010. My grandfather passed and a car ran into my house. Hello? The ramifications of this drama were twofold: I inherited my grandfather’s HF radio and I became very interested in personal preparedness.

    With that motivation, I took the technical and general tests simultaneously and joined the Portland NET program. Quickly I learned about ARES and joined this great organization and have been an active member for about three years now. I’m a real ham. I contest, chase DX, am serious about Field Day and do a lot of experimentation with digital modes like HF Digital Voice, JT65, and FM satellite work. I’ve been very active in setting up local RMS gateways at various locations around town and enjoy all the exciting features of modern APRS functionality. I enjoy learning new things, technical things, but I tend to get bored with something after I’ve figured it out. I’m often reading about the next cool thing it seems like…

    In real life I’m a long time IT manager, a Portland native, and I live in a nice little house in the Alameda neighborhood. All my family is here in town or up the hill in Sandy (a mixed blessing) and I have 12 nieces and nephews, which seems insane when I say it like that. Christmas is complete chaos these days.

  • Featured Member Profile: Garrett AF7RF

    I grew up in Klamath Falls. My grandfather was an electrician and fostered in me a fascination with all things electrical. I studied electronics all four years in high school. Remember vacuum tubes? I took a shot at a degree in electronic engineering at OSU, but discovered I hated engineering.

    I was working for ODOT at Government Camp in 1983. We were using CB radios but couldn’t get around the mountain. We needed more power, so the crew and I got ham radio licenses.

    I started my electrical apprenticeship in 1990, was teaching the program by 1993, and got my journeyman license in 1994. In 1998, I became a Master Electrician and got certified as an electrical inspector. By this time I was working on traffic signals for ODOT in Portland. I went to the Bridge Shop in 1999. I started working with County Emergency Management and Homeland Security, and in 2006 I was one of the first in the area to become a COM-L. I tried for years to learn Morse Code so I could get my General ticket but, dang it, I just couldn’t learn CW. As soon as they dropped the code requirement, I got my General and then six months later my Extra Class ticket.

    I became the ARES Deputy EC in 2010. I retired as Multnomah County Senior Bridge Inspector last year. I am still employed part-time with Multnomah County Emergency Management as their COM-L and Amateur Radio Coordinator.

    I have been married to my lovely lady, Meri, for over 40 years now. We have two kids. Brittany got her English degree at PSU, is married and lives in Portland. Spencer earned his master’s in music at Juilliard and is an opera tenor headed to Zurich, Switzerland with the young artist program.

  • Featured Member Profile: Robert WX5TEX

    I grew up in a small dusty town outside of Lubbock, Texas. Growing up out there, my dad and several other family members were on the Lubbock Fire Department and that must be where my interest in emergency response grew up. Most of my memories from growing up out there revolved around the incredible thunderstorms and tornadoes we frequently had. As a firefighter, my dad would often have to go out to give field reports as my mom and I huddled indoors. In fact, my earliest memory is of the time I was playing outside with our next door neighbor, and suddenly running inside to tell my mother that the “sky didn’t look right” only to have our house directly hit by a tornado seconds later.

    A couple years later, my dad bought me an electronic experiment set, which included instructions for building your own AM receiver. To be able to put together a few parts and be able to pick up radio signals blew my mind, and I spent my teenage years trying to pick up radio signals from greater and greater distances.

    Fast forward to 1997, when I started college in Dallas, Texas. My best friend and I decided we wanted to start chasing and photographing storms, particularly lightning and tornadoes. After risking our lives doing that for a couple of years, I learned about the NWS Skywarn program. I couldn’t sign up fast enough, so in 2000, I studied for two weeks and got my ham radio license and joined the South Plains Storm Spotting team. This team was unique in that we covered 19 counties in West Texas, and along with working directly with the National Weather Service, we also worked with the Severe Storm Research teams at Texas Tech, Oklahoma State University, and several local TV stations.

    About a year later, after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, a couple members of the city council came to our ham radio club and asked us to put together the first ARES group in West Texas, which I was honored to assist in doing.

    Eventually, I moved up to Oregon and due to the lack of exciting storms, my activity level in ham radio drastically diminished, until last year when my schedule finally provided me the time to dedicate to the Multnomah ARES unit. I am excited and honored to be working with a team of people that are so well organized, dynamic, and awesome in order to provide the county & state with what I consider one of the top ARES teams in the US!

    Outside of ham radio, I am currently trying to finish a communications degree at PSU and am in the process of restarting my photography business. I also do security consulting, risk and threat assessments, and a little executive protection. I love camping, shooting, and am excited to announce that my wife and I are expecting our first child this fall.