Biography

I recieved my novice and general licenses in 1963, and my Amateur Extra in 1969. I have now been licensed for 58 years, and an Amateur Extra for over 52 Years!!! I am a life member of the ARRL, the QCWA, and the OOTC. My FIST member number is 1467. My North American QRP CW Club member number is 2573.

I am the former owner (1994-2009) of The Vibroplex Co., Inc., the oldest name in ham radio. I passed Vibroplex on to Scott Robbins W4PA, formerly of the 'old' TenTec (RIP), on December 21, 2009. The picture is of me handing over the 'key' to Vibroplex to Scott (Photo by Jim Buffington, K5JIM.). Scott is doing a fabulous job of continuing the Vibroplex tradition. Visit the Vibroplex web site at www.vibroplex.com and buy a Vibroplex from Scott.

I have a QTH in Laguna Beach, Bay County, FL and in Opelika, Lee County, AL.

I have a DMR radio, catch me on the 310023 East Central Alabama talk group.

73,

Mitch, W4OA

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Recent email to my friend and former neighbor Dale, W4OP, about my satellite tv experiment back in the '70s:

June 22, 2020

Above is a picture of my friend Richard Christian WA4CVP (sk) and me with our satellite tv antennas sometimes in the late 70s. The parabolic was 8 ft. but we built it without bracing and it wouldn't hold shape. Rather than rebuild it we built a ~13' spherical, which worked great. I don't remember the gain. A mysterious white van showed up one Sunday afternoon while we were working on the antennas and the guy driving told us he had heard someone was building a satellite tv antenna. He asked us a lot of suspicious questions, including what we were going to use for the lna, receiver etc. We thought he was with one of the three letter agencies. When we told him we had a homebrew lna and receiver, he asked if we would like for him to test the lna. Turned out he was the local ATT microwave technican and the van was full of microwave test equipment, probably about $500k worth back in the day. He said our lna tested 20db gain with about ~1.8 db noise figure. Not too bad for a homebrew lna in that day. The lna gaas fet cost about $100 and was easily the most expensive part in the receiver. (To solder the gaas fet to the lna pcb I turned the hot water on in the bathroom shower, steamed up the humidity to about 99%, unplugged the hot soldering iron, and quickly did the soldering there in the bathroom.) Lots of fun, the good old days...


When we tried to receive the satellite signals with the parabolic antenna, we got one channel, the CBS live feed to affiliate stations. We were elated. But, we discovered that we received the signal regardless of the direction the antenna was pointing, including pointing at the ground. We talked to the local CBS affiliate chief engineer about our 'sat tv super antenna and receiver'. He plotted us on a map and informed us that we were directly in the path of the ATT microwave link into their station. Mystery solved, and we knew everything WORKED. That's when we decided to build the spherical antenna.

Don't laugh at my red polyester pants, at least my hair wasn't grey back then...

Mitch W4OA
ps my gks found the picture just the other day and wanted to know who was in the picture.