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About WB4BXW

I first became interested in electronics while in high school (1953-57), building a small transistor radio in a clear plastic cigarette case (remember those) for a science class project. Also building several other regenerative receivers (tube) while in the CAP.

After graduating from high school I joined the USAF where I was selected for electronic training at Kessler AFB in Biloxi Mississippi. Here I spend 10 months training, starting with basic electronics (still tubes at this time) and ending with long range and height finding radar (FPS3, FPS6, and IFF) systems. After graduating from the electronics class, my next assignment was Tyndall AFB in Panama City, Florida. Here I worked on the FPS20 and FPS6 radar systems. For about 6 months I was loaned to the communications sections where I worked in the receiver group, working with the R-390 and GRC27-R278b I also had the privilege of being trained on one of the first computer systems being used to guide fighter planes to their targets. This system (GPA35), was an analogy computer system using all tubes (mostly 12AX7's). My next assignment was at a small radar site, 642 AC&W in St. John's Newfoundland, Canada, again working on radar systems.

Sometime during my first years with Western Electric I also obtain my amateur (ham) radio advance class license WB4BXW which I still hold and my commercial First Class Radio License.

First Licensed as WN4BXW - 12/17/1965
Licensed as WB4BXW Technician - (C) 1/30/1966
Licensed as WB4BXW Technician - 9/21/1971
Licensed as WB4BXW General - 11/21/1971
Licensed as WB4BXW Advanced - 8/19/1975
Current Licensed as WB4BXW Advanced.

During my first 10 years with Burroughs, it seems like half of them were spend in school (Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angles) training and working on different computer systems (B300, B5500, B6800, B6900, B7800, B1700, B1900) ranging from small to very large mainframes. I also managed a group of field engineers maintaining computers system at 2 hospitals along with 2 large mainframes and about 300 early pc's at our company office used to develop and debug software for hospital systems.

In 1976 I became interested in what was then call Micro Computer systems building a SWTPC using the Motorola B6800 micro processor chip (before the IBM PC). The clock speed on this first system was a fast 1meg. It also had 4k (not meg) of memory and used a paper tape reader to load a program (diskettes and hard drives were not yet available for PC's). Later cassette tape and then 5 1/4" 180k floppy disk became available to load and save programs on. Next came a large 5 meg hard drive which no one figured would ever be filled with data. I was also able to upgrade the memory to 64k (not meg) for a price close to $500.00. Things have come a long way since then. I was also privilege to have published several programs written in assembler language for this system in several of the then PC magazines on the market. In the early 80's, I taught Micro Computers at CPCC for several semester until my traveling at Burroughs forced me to give this up.

I also worked part time for 30 years with Music and Electronics, Inc. repairing electronic organ's, amplifiers, and sound systems.