Biography

With over 50 years in the telecommunications racket, Ray has been involved in just about every aspect of the business. In the "Old days" (notice the absence of "good") He cut his teeth on tube (you know, Nothing State Devices) HF & VHF gear. He received his first FCC Commercial license at age 15 while working for a small AM broadcast station in the wilds of the far Northern Sierra Nevada's in California. From there he went on to College at Brigham Young University in Electronics Engineering.

A small war (uh, police action...) interrupted his studies at BYU and he joined the US Air Force. There, he worked as a Communications Control Specialist and Combat Controller in Alaska, Texas, Japan and other locations throughout the world.

Leaving the Air Force after 10 years, he worked for Collins Marine Corp., of San Francisco CA, engineering, installing and maintaining RADAR, SONAR, HF, VHF, IR and Satcom marine systems making use of his FCC First Class ticket. In 1981 he went to work for the USDA Forest Service as an Electronics Technician on the Mendocino National Forest in Northern California.

After a few years there he transfered to Cedar City in Southern Utah as the Information Systems Manger for the Dixie and Fishlake National Forests.

While with the Forest Service he was heavily involved in wild-land fire fighting. Qualified both as Communications Unit Leader and Communications Technician under the ICS (Incident Command System), he logged over 4000 hours on fires all over the western United States and Alaska.

As the sole technical rep. and the only Ham on the Joint Electronics Site Fee Task force in 1992-3 he argued successfully to maintain the policy of "Minimum Administrative Fee" for all bonafide Amateur radio sites on U.S. Government administered public lands.

In 1997 he retired from the USDA Forest Service. He was then employed by ITT FSIC in Saudi Arabia working in the Middle East supporting the U.S. Military Training Mission in Telecommunications Infrastructure design and training from 1998 to mid 1999.

After returning from the Middle East, he founded ISA-USA,Inc. an industrial electronics R&D,telecom consulting,technical writing and documentation company. He designed and installed a 70 site weather reporting system for a large lumber company using low band data linking. and voice response telemetry for monitoring fire weather and growing conditions. Numerous SCADA and other data collection, remote monitoring and control system were designed, installed and maintained by ISA-USA.

He was also the engineer of record for several regional AM and FM radio broadcast stations and one Regional Television station in Southern Utah.

In 2007 he and his High School Sweetheart and XYL, Cathleen decided to move back to Alaska. They bought a place in Trapper Creek AK shortly after. They rebuilt the cozy cabin there while Ray worked for Shell Oil on the North Slope as the Lead Telecom Project Manager.

Events lead him to a position at the Red Dog Mine in North West Alaska, where he worked as the Lead Telecom Tech for the richest zinc mine in the world.

In early 2016 a RIF (Reduction In Force) Sent him back to the job hunt and he changed careers and became the Assistant Sporting Goods Manager for Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply in Salmon where he worked with a really great bunch of folks and had a lot of fun as an arms dealer!

A phone call in July 2016 changed all that. He is now working back in Alaska on the Long Range Radar System (formally the DEW Line) watching for bad guys, as a Station Technician for Arctec at the same USAF sites that he worked at in the Air Force in the 1970's!

He and Cathleen made their home in Wasilla AK for several years, then, anticipating retirement, moved to Salmon Idaho in 2013.

Ray and Cathleen have been married for over 47 years, traveling around the Western US to visit their 6 children and 28 grandchildren and 4 Great-Grandkids!

Ray currently holds a FCC General Radio Operators Lic. w/ Radar Endorsement, FCC Extra Class Amateur Radio Lic., FAA Private Pilot SEL Lic. and a Master Diver SCUBA Cert. along with a bunch of other generally meaningless papers that he sticks on the wall, in various boxes,drawers etc... "Don't seem to impress the fish." he says...

Drop him a line at his e-mail address, he'll be glad to QSL you via Internet or hard copy if he's not out fly fishing.

Equipment

Ft-991, FT-817, FT-857, MicroBitx, G5RV, 3 Element SteppIR on 55' crank-up tower