Seminars

Seminar Room Location: Scroll to the bottom of this page and find the “VE Testing and Presentations” entrance in the top left corner.

Abstract: Building electronics equipment from a kit can be a fun and rewarding experience. And extremely educational. In this seminar, Paul will provide his expert guidance for your kit building journey, from an entry-level soldering exercise kit, through several useful devices and test tools, all the way to a full-blown ham radio transceiver.

Bio: Paul received his Novice license in 1973 while he was in high school. Over the years he upgraded to General, Advanced, and then Extra back in the old days when knowing CW (Morse Code) was a license requirement. He was only intermittently active over the years due to work and family commitments until he retired from Boeing in 2016 and found he now had time to more fully immerse himself in the hobby. He began volunteering at the Harkins Ham Shack in the Arizona Science Center where he was re-introduced to CW, and where he learned about a relatively new activity at the time, Summits on the Air (SOTA). He began doing SOTA activations as well as chasing other activators using CW as his primary operating mode. He’s not very fast, but fast enough! In 2022 he earned the SOTA Shack Sloth award for chasing over 1,000 activators. One of his ham buddies at the Science Center, Ron Taylor (WA7GIL), exposed him to the fun of building radios and he was off and running. He first built some very simple Elenco kits to practice soldering, then graduated to an Oak Hills Research 20m CW kit. After that, it was several QRPlabs single band kits and then an Elecraft K2, which is the rig he uses at home. He also successfully built a T41 Software Defined Transceiver based on a book by Jack Purdum and Albert Peters which required extensive surface mount component soldering and working directly from schematics which was his most challenging experience. He volunteers periodically with the Maricopa County Emergency Communications Group (MCECG) and is a member of the Thunderbird Amateur Radio Club (TBARC). He resides in Glendale, AZ with his wife and son.

Bio: Rick (W7RAP) has been a Radio Amateur since 1975  and holds an Amateur EXTRA class license. He retired as Missile Design Manager at Hughes/(Raytheon) in 2007.

He has served as ARRL Arizona Section Manager since 2017, as Assistant Section Manager from 2011 through 2017, and as a VE team coordinator since 1998.  He is a certified VE Team Lead with the ARRL, W5YI, and Laurel VECs, conducting test sessions at ARRL Conventions and Hamfests.

Rick has been mentoring young Arizona Hams,  and making ARRL presentations at hamfests and club activities since 2004.  He is an ARRL registered License Instructor as well as one of Gordon West’s (WB6NOA) certified Instructor/Elmers.  He participates with Gordo in making presentations at Arizona Hamfests.  

He is past President of  the General Dynamics Ham Club and The Hughes Catalina Radio Club.  He is currently a member of  several Amateur organizations:  CADXA, SARBA, CARBA, Kachina, Yavapai, Oro Valley, and the Cactus  Intertie System.

Has been an AMSAT member,  ARES qualified in 1990.   RACES certified in 1993,  and is an ARCA club coordination council representative.  He participates in Club coordination meetings.

He maintains a linked UHF Remote Base repeater,  and a Repeater and APRS Digipeater on Greens Peak. He participates daily in HF Nets , ARRL Nets, UHF Nets and D-Star. Meet him on 3.933 MHz any evening at 5:30 PM.

Rick participates in the monthly ARRL TEAMS meetings with other Field Service Section Managers and ARRL Staff. He also supports the ARRL staff at the Dayton ARRL National Convention.