I first met John (KC2EH when I first met him) in the early fall of 1983 several days after we moved into our new home in Woodbridge, VA. I was putting up an antenna and John and his wife Pat came walking by. You guessed it. That was the beginning of a long set of QSOs. John and his family moved out of the neighborhood in the summer of 1987, but we stayed connected with a regular weekend schedule. No matter where he was or where I was we made the contact. One time on a Saturday morning over about a two hour period when he was in Panama (HP1XUT) we made contact on every band from 75M to 10M. In 27 years we have QSOed from 160M to 432 and I don't think we missed more than 20 weekends, and that was because some were eyeball QSOs... and they also included the XYLs. John was also my wife's gift consultant. A number of years back I thought about getting a Flex-Radio. John, Gerald and my wife got together and a brand new FLEX-1000 arrived for my birthday. I won't tell anymore about the other gifts he talked my wife into, but I sure did receive some great toys for Christmas and birthdays. Over the 27 years we have been to many hamfests, hauled lots of good stuff back and forth and have some good stories to tell about some amazing sales or acquisitions. While John was living in Texas it but a crimp in some of our hamfests together but I did manage to join him twice at the Belton hamfest and Dayton at least a dozen times. If I wasn't at the hamfest with John, at least I got a full account during the next QSO. My last QSO with John was 2 January. His son Chris talked him into going out to the ham shack and turning on the radio. Lucky for me I was sitting by my rig tuned to 14185 when he came on. Thanks Chris for bringing your dad out to the ham shack. We are all going to miss John's generous assistance and advice, enthusiasm, out going spirit and friendship. It's been an honor to call him my good friend. 73 John. You will always be alive in my hamshack. Bob K8MLM _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flexradio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/
