Biography

Ralph Roberts grew up in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina, falling in love with electronics and becoming a ham radio enthusiast (still is today). He’s a decorated Vietnam veteran, studied electrical engineering, worked for NASA during the Apollo program, and did product engineering for aerospace companies.

In the mid-70s – when personal computers came only as kits in boxes – he built his first one. By 1978, Ralph was writing about and on computers, one of the pioneers in word processing. He still does today and, as a professional writer, has written over 100 books and sold more than 20 million words. He's still at it.

In 1978 Ralph formed the company that became Creativity, Inc. and still serves as CEO. As a national book publisher, the company has released approximately 1,000 titles in the last 35 years and continues publishing.

He got his Novice license May 23, 1963 WN4NUO (continously licensed since) and moved up to Conditional WA4NUO later that year. In 1970, he upgraded to Advanced and then Extra in 2014. He also held DL4RR while in the Army in Germany in 1967-68 and established and commanded MARS station AB8AAR in Quan Loi, Vietnam 1969-70. While in Vietam, Ralph won the Bronze Star, Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) and other decorations.

In May of 2014, the FCC granted him W5VE, his current call. It was bittersweet to give up WA4NUO after 51 years but Ralph's quite happy with W5VE, even though he sometimes has to convince DX stations he's really in North Carolina. The correct answer, of course, is that there's a very small enclave of the 5th call area in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina. That's his story and he's sticking to it.

Ralph has done about everything there is to do in amateur radio and continues looking for new stuff. Currently he’s fascinated by SDR (Software Defined Radio), digital modes, and still loves ragchewing. More about Ralph's hamming stuff at W5VE.com. He also serves as a VE (Volunteer Examiner) team leader with the WCARS VEC organization.

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Current HF rig is an Icom IC-7200, 100 watts. Antenna is a QSO King 117' endfed wire antenna. With a LDG IT-100 tuner, I work all bands from 160 to 6 meters with very good SWRs.