ABOUT KK6IRZ
I was born in Maine and first became a Ham Operator in 1989. I became friends with a Ham Operator that also would hang out on the CB band. We got together one day and he told me about Ham Radio. I decided to get my ticket and began my studies. For 3 weeks I went crazy learning and went from no ticket to Advanced class. At that time my call was KA1WLZ.
This same Ham that introduced me to Ham Radio sold me my first setup, a Heathkit TX1 Apache and SX-101 reciever. My First contact "ON AIR" was Les W1FAT working 40M AM. My Apache was not tuned correctly and was all stock so the audio was very narrow and crapy sounding. Les learned that I was a new Ham and offered to help me make my apache sound better and teach me to tune everything up correctly if I wanted to stop by his place which was about 40min away from where I lived in Maine. When I went to his house I found a very nice Ham Shack and a well experienced ham with much repair and building experience. After working on my Apache for about 2 hours by reconfiguring the audio section and a little help on proper tuning and loading on the transmitter I headed on home to try it all out.
Soon after I put the rig ON AIR I again found another operator that lived about 50 miles away and had a very colorful and relaxed way of talking but also I could tell by the way people would listen to his comments that he was big into design and building (WA1HLR). After talking with him for a while I was invited to come see his place and talk radio.
It has been 25 years now since that time and because of those early days of Ham Radio where I began building radios and other electric devices I became a Engineer. Over the past 30 years I have had the opportunity to travel around the world working on equipment and developing systems all because of Ham Radio