Biography

KP4CW was born at the Rodriguez Hospital in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico it was an Army hospital located at Fort Brooke (which housed the U.S. Army Cook School), in the main entrance area to "El Morro". Lived for a few years in Santurce and Juana Diaz, then my father who served in the U.S. Army as a Army Cook and then promoted to the Mess Sargent SFC rank, was transferred to Fort Knox, Kentucky and we all moved along with him. My dad's last oversea's tour of duty was at Munich, Germany and then my father retired in the late 60's after serving 22 years and we all moved to Santa Juanita, Bayamon, P.R. I started my interest in radio when I bought a handheld Lafayette CB radio and tuned into one of CB channels only to listen to a AM station from Africa and not too many CBer's.

I then became interested in shortwave because I had a tabletop SW radio and started to listen to "hams" in the AM mode in 40m, soon after I bought a CB, then migrated into amateur bands when I decided to study for my novice license, practicing CW by listening to the AMECO code practice on a LP, this I practiced CW every afternoon after school hours in junior high school until I took my novice test and passed it, years later I upgraded to General class, then into Advanced Class license. I was extremely lucky to get the callsign KP4CW because they were generated at random and there was not a vanity call request at that time.

After high school I went to college and started to meet other hams, like KP4AST (now NP4A) Pedro Piza, Jorge Mosquera, KP4DBR, Roberto Jimenez, KP4CLB now NP4AC and many others. I also met a lot of ham operators that were studying at my college (C.A.A.M.) that were from Dominican Republic, Peru and Haiti. We attended many local hamfests, visited interesting sites like the Arecibo Radio Observatory, commercial AM/FM/TV stations and participated in several SSB/CW contests,including the ARRL International DX Contest of which we placed third place worldwide under my old callsign KP4ENV. After I earned my masters degree in science and math at the University of Puerto Rico I was not too active except for attending the local Puerto Rico hamfests, and dealing and wheeling when possible. In 1972, I started teaching college level math courses (pre-algebra, Math for Meds-nursing school, intermediate and college algebra, statistics, liberal/fine arts math, and pre-calculus) at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, Biostatistics at the Ponce School of Medicine and also taught part-time at Central University in Bayamon. In the mid 80's I moved to Lake City, FL where I have lived for more than 33 years. Retired math college professor after 43 years in the academia world had to say goodbye to the teaching career.

My wife (now a retired Physical Therapist from 30 years service of the VAMC) and I purchased years ago a one acre lot up in the mountains in the central zone of the island (Orocovis) at an elevation of about 2,300 feet with a spectacular view of the north-central part of the island, an ideal site for an antenna farm.

Construction of this second home site was completed on November 31, 2015. Home is 1,320 sq.ft. with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, beautiful balcony overseeing from that elevation the Atlantic ocean and northern parts of the island, nice location and ideal for all types of antennas from verticals, dipoles, long wires, beams, etc.

Married, have a daughter, son, and a grandson. I have a brother (non-ham) who retired from the U.S. Air Force, 10 years active and 20+ years US Air Force reserve and who is now a retired Radiologist from a Florida Veterans Affairs Medical Center hospital.

Equipment

KP4CW station is composed of: (as of September 15, 2019):

Kenwood TS-590SG

Yaesu FT-991

Icom IC-7000

Icom IC-7300

Icom R7100

SDRplay 2 with SDRuno software

Two (2m/440) verticals on a 65 foot tower

ZeroFive 33-foot-10-80-meter-multiband-foldover-freestanding-vertical-antenna-5kw-unun

One Alpha Delta 10-80m dipole

One OCF 80-10 m dipole

Lost one of my towers and HF beam during Hurricane Irma in 2017.
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Home site (second shack) in Orocovis, Puerto Rico

Icom 7200
Icom R7000 receiver with stainless steel discone antenna
Plastar AT-500 Manual Antenna Tuner
Random wire antenna for 10-160m (173 feet)
End Fed wire antenna for 10-160m (162 feet)
Titan 144/440 mhz vertical
TriEx crank up 40' tower
Five element 6 meter beam

Other hobby interests:

Experimental Aircraft
Member of the Experimental Aircraft Association
Chapter 977 Cannon Creek Airport (private), Lake City, FL
Columbia Amateur Radiom SocietynClub member
ARRL-USA club member
ARRL-PR club member
Columbia Amaruer Radio Society club member
Member of la Federación de Radio Aficionados de Puerto Rico, Inc.(FRA)