Biography

Hi, and thanks for visiting my QRZCQ page. Regardless of what it says in the big print above, my name on the air is Dick, and has been for over 60 years.

I have been a ham since October 1959, and was originally licensed as Kn4PKV. After my novice CW period, I enjoyed a brief stint on 10M AM back in the day, as well as some 40M CW. Off to college, I had a HB 1625 transmitter and an HQ140X receiver ( now owned by W4DCS ), and fell in love with 20 M CW, at the bottom of the band. Then my first job in the Cape Canaveral area ( 1969 ) exposed me to K4IXC and the world of meteor scatter and moonbounce, with a little bit of VHF/UHF tropo thrown in. My locations included Florida, South Carolina, and 46 years in North Carolina. I enjoyed tropo in all of these locations, and was amazed at what locals like W4VHH and W4NUS could do on 144 and 432 without band openings, etc. I was hooked until 1992, working all kinds of MS, as well as three bands of EME, tropo, sporatic E, mountain tops and such in the world above 50 MHz. Then business life took over, and in 1992 I was completely QRT for 25 years. Not even a handlheld was active in all that time. In 2017 I was goaded back into ham radio by K4MV, K4PXU and NG4T. So I am back, with completely different interests in ham radio than my last 'life' in the hobby. Now you can find me at the bottom 30KHz of many HF bands, and on the digital frequencies as well.

Presently I use a TenTec Omni-D, usually running about 40 W, sometimes pushed up to 75 W if the SWR circuit does not kick me out of business. I also have an SB-220 Heathkit amp, but the little Omni will only drive it to about 300 mA plate ( it idles at 200 mA LOL ). So I normally just use the Omni by iteslf, as it's plenty in most cases to work who I hear. On 17M I use an Alinco DX70TH because the Omni won't operate on that band due to design issues. My antennas are dipoles at about 60 feet. I love experimenting with wire antennas, so maybe I can get an OCF dipole up and find my way to some other bands.

For my long time ham friends, a brief explanation of why I changed my call from K4PKV, which I had held since 1959, to W4PID in 2017.

W4PID was originally issued to Roy Hill, my mentor in ham radio. We lived next door to Roy on Carolina Ave in Kingsport, Tennessee until I was around 5 1/2 years of age. During that time, I often wandered over to Roy's house, and peered in his side workshop to see his ham equipment. He was licensed first in 1949.

I remember vividly Roy showing me his VSWR test device. He was using open wire feeders, and a short section of open wire feeder with a pair of flashlight bulbs made up his tester. It was a directional coupler of sorts.. connected to and placed in parallel to the feeder, it lit the outgoing bulb and hopefully the return bulb was not glowing.. Point is, I remember him introducing me to electronics in general and ham radio specifically when I was less than 6 yrs. old. He actually is responsible for most of my electronics career, it turns out.

So move forward to 1959, I take my ham ticket license exam from Roy in September, and get my call, Kn4PKV, in October. He was my second contact, first being Paul Metzger, W4BQK. Roy and I stayed in occasional contact until his death in 2005.

I had considered requesting his call many times over the years, after 'vanity' call signs became the thing, but I wanted to make sure any family members did not want it.. I don't even know if there were other hams in the family. So when his license expired fully, and the wait period expired ( August 2016 ) I began to think seriously about dumping the call I had held for 58 years. In typical fashion, I procrastinated for another 16 months., and nobody took the call..so I applied, and of course got it. No other applicants.

In addition to having a great deal of personal value to me, it is a cool call. A controls engineer ( my niche in life ) uses Proportional Integral Derivative loops all the time, designing circuits to prevent overshoot and yet optimize time to setpoint.. and they are, of course, PID loops by acronym. So, I was destined to have this call, LOL.. K4PKV has long been associated with high power, microwave, moonbounce, meteor scatter, and such... and that's not what I do now, nor will it be in the future more than likely. I just don't have the energy now. Plus, 58 years is enough with one call. So that's the story on W4PID. I am having fun with it, chasing DX on CW, mostly 20 Meters.. I hope Roy approves..

73 de Dick, W4PID

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

I like old rebuilt stuff.

TenTec OmniD ( circa 1979 ) Belonged to my dad, K4FQ (WA4BXZ)(SK) Main Workhorse

Drake C line ( circa 1975 ) Basis for my EME/MS stations, still kicking on HF

Alinco DX70TH ( the new kid on the block, only 19 years old ) I use this on WARC bands

Heath SB-220 ( I built it in 1983 ) Seldom on the air

Antennas are dipoles, and an occasional appearance by my R3 Cushcraft Vertical for portable operation