About Me

You might say that this thing called "radio" (and a love for Morse code) is in my DNA.  

Some of that probably stems from my Great Grandfather (Thomas's) profession in the early 1900s as a Morse telegrapher and dispatcher for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in Montreal, Quebec Canada. He went on to perform the same functions for the Boston and Maine Railroad when the family emigrated to Fitchburg, Massachusetts in the United States.

It was in Fitchburg that his daughter, Ivy (my Grandmother) met and married my Grandfather, Charles, a Greek immigrant who came through Ellis Island in New York City with nothing more than the shirt on his back and an eighth grade education.

Later, when the family moved to West Orange, New Jersey in the mid 1920s,  Charles quickly found employment as a tool and die maker with Thomas Edison in his West Orange, NJ Laboratory. As a result of his work there, Charles became a "co-inventor" for a number of Edison's inventions.  

During his time in New Jersey, Charles (we affectionately called him "Pop") also moonlighted by building AM radio receiver sets (from scratch) using parts purchased at "Radio Row" in New York City.  What's more, Pop did repairs on existing radio sets for his local clientele. 

Then, when the family purchased a filling station and lunch room in Raymond, New Hampshire in 1929, Pop continued to both build and repair radio sets for yet another local clientele in and around the town of Raymond. 

Later, when the family expanded the lunch room and gasoline station into a fully functioning restaurant, they named it "The Radio Grove". 

That's probably because Pop mounted two large megaphone speakers on the roof of the newly-built main restaurant building so as to entertain their restaurant patrons (and other passersby) with some of the live radio programming of that era. 

It's important to remember that, not everyone in rural New Hampshire could afford their own radio sets during those early years of radio. So, Pop's idea did double duty. Not only was he attracting and entertaining the family's restaurant patrons, but he was also advertising the fact that he built radio sets for sale.

The Radio Grove name lives on to this day as, while the restaurant is long gone, the current owner of the property built a hardware store on the site and aptly named it Radio Grove Hardware.

My Great Grandfather (Right) is shown here with his 
hand on a Vibroplex "Bug" soon after graduation 
from Morse code training. He later went on to 
become a telegrapher and dispatcher for 
the Canadian Pacific as well as the Boston 
and Maine Railroads. 

My Grandfather built AM receiving sets "from scratch" 
during the 1930s

My Grandfather mounted two large megaphone speakers 
on the roof of their restaurant to entertain patrons 
with the radio programming of the day.

My Time in Broadcasting

My own first foray into radio was via a small broadcaster my graduate electrical engineering Dad wired into my kid's photograph.  It allowed me to gleefully play “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic” through all the AM Radios in the house.  

For a young child…THAT was neat! 

Later, I wired up a Lafayette Radio, two tube “Broadcaster” into our family’s component Hi-Fi setup and established my very own AM Broadcast station. I later found this little thing REALLY worked well when I connected its modest antenna (via several lengths of insulated wire) to our neighbor’s 40-foot, steel TV antenna tower!   

 
This Lafayette Radio "Broadcaster" gave me my very first experiences
 with an actual (albeit extremely low power!) broadcast transmitter. 

But, after a couple of years of this activity, I discovered that radio broadcasting was really kind of fun. So, as a high school 11th grader, on December 4, 1968, I sat for (and passed on my first try) the USA’s Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Third Class Radio-Telephone License at the FCC Offices in Boston, Massachusetts.  

Then, with my newly-minted FCC license in hand, I offered my (free) services to the local AM broadcast outlet (WWNH,  930 Kilocycles - now WPKX) in my hometown of Rochester, New Hampshire. As the station's owner back then was one of our neighbors, she gave me free reign to teach myself the ins and outs of professional broadcasting in their production studio and even allowed me to have an occasional stint "on-air" just prior to the station’s midnight sign-off.  

Needless to say, by that time, I was absolutely hooked on the magic of radio.   

That experience led to work in the late 1960s and early 1970s at the University of New Hampshire’s student station (WUNH-FM) with later on-air stints (mostly weekends) at various commercial stations in New England. Those stations included WHAV-FM (now WXRV-FM) in Haverhill, Massachusetts and WDNH-FM (now WOKQ-FM) in Dover, New Hampshire.  During my (university-year) summers visiting my grandparents in Florida, I also did an evening gig at WSTU-AM in Stuart, Florida.   

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My Work With AMSAT®    
      

Throughout most of the 1990s, I served as a member of the Board of Directors for AMSAT,  The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation.  AMSAT is a non-profit, 501(C)(3) educational and scientific corporation of over 3000 members based in Washington, DC.  I also served the corporation as its Executive Vice President for several years before then taking a turn as AMSAT's President.  In January, 2010, I was once again asked to assist the organization as its Treasurer.  I retired from that position in 2019.

Yours truly (third from right) joins other past and present AMSAT Presidents at the organization's 50th
 Anniversary Symposium in 2019.  I'm holding one of our two anniversary cakes so that
Dr. Perry Klein, W3PK, AMSAT's Founding President, can make the first cut.

Currently, AMSAT's ground and space-based corporate assets are worth well in excess of $4 Million. The organization (along with its predecessors and affiliate organizations worldwide) have used predominantly donated resources and volunteer labor to build and launch over 100 Amateur Radio satellites into Earth orbit since 1961. This has also included placing Amateur Radio equipment onboard both the NASA Space Shuttle as well as the International Space Station (ISS). 

During my previous work as a senior elected official of AMSAT, I helped an international team from over 14 nations assure the funding, construction and successful launch of the largest and most expensive Amateur Radio satellite ever built...AMSAT's Phase 3-D. The satellite was later re-named AMSAT-OSCAR 40 once it was successfully launched in November, 2000.

My Photography
      

I've also been interested in photography since my early childhood.  During my many North American and overseas travels, I've captured thousands of images of people, places and events both digitally and on film using predominantly Pentax® photo equipment. While my primary interest is in landscape photography, scores of my photos have also appeared in a number of published works.  

Some of my photo publication credits to date include the nationally syndicated newspaper SpaceNews, as well as the (Dover, NH) Fosters Daily Democrat, the (Wichita Falls, TX) Sheppard Senator, the (Dayton, OH) Skywrighter as well as the (Sarnia, ON) Sarnia Observer and Sarnia This Week.

As you might also suspect, many of my photos have also appeared in a number of Amateur Radio-related publications published worldwide, including The Radio Amateur's Handbook (USA), The ARRL Antenna Book (USA), The ARRL Satellite Anthology (USA), The ARRL Satellite Handbook (USA), QST Magazine (USA), CQ Magazine (USA), CQ VHF Magazine (USA), 73 Magazine (USA), Monitoring Times Magazine (USA), The Spectrum Monitor (USA), The AMSAT Journal (USA), the AMSAT-UK Oscar News (Great Britain), The Canadian Amateur Magazine (Canada) and CQ Ham Radio (Japan).  A group of my photos also appeared nationally in the United States on a segment of the Sci-Fi Television Network program Inside Space.  A small sampling of my favorite photos from my extensive landscape portfolio are shown below.

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