A little about me...
When I was a kid, my parents bought me mail-order science kits. These kits were my introduction to science and technology. The high school I went to was for nerds. It had an emphasis on technology and academics. One thing that attracted me to that school was the annual senior science fair. The kids in that school were building main frame computers and lasers. My reaction to that was “Wow, that is where I wanted to be”. When it was my turn, I built an RF plasma torch.
After 4 years in the Air Force as a helicopter mechanic, I got serious about college. My first degree was mechanical engineering. During my bachelors, I did an internship at Nasa at Edwards AFB. I had lots of fun at Nasa. After graduation, I got an engineering job at TRW working on the development of satellites. During may stay at TRW, I got a masters in electrical engineering. Trying to alter my career path, I left TRW to work on the B-2 program with Northrop. I did this for four years and then went back to TRW to work on the Milstar Advanced Processor program.
By this time, my kids were getting close to school age. My wife agreed that we didn’t want to raise our kids in southern California, so we moved to Colorado. The goal was a better quality of life for us all. In Colorado, I started working on ground phased array radar systems. This was new to me, but still a lot of fun to learn something new. I worked the ground radar for about seven years, then went to work on a ground satellite communication system for four years. After the satellite communication project, I went back to the radar systems. My last position before I retired was chief engineer on a digital signal processor project.
I started in amateur radio in 1995 with the call sign KBØRLH. I got my Technician license by attending a class offered by a local radio club in Colorado Springs. I was not very active in ham radio back then, because I was just too busy working on radar systems and satellite communications systems. After retiring from work, I soon got my General license and within a few years, got my Amateur Extra license. Shortly after upgrading to Amateur Extra, I obtained the WØZI call sign.
If you want to explore all that ham radio has today, besides having knowledge in analog side of radio, it helps to have knowledge in software, computers and networking. This is especially true for the digital side of radio. There is a multitude of applications to get you into the digital side as well as support the accompanying processes in ham radio. I found that configuring the software and radios was a challenge and sometimes took a considerable amount of time.
Joining several ham radio groups, I saw that many other hams were facing the same challenges I did. This is was the motivator that has led me to develop this site. The intent of w0zi.com is to share with other ham radio operators the recipes for making these systems work.
Contact info: info@w0zi.com