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My name is Rick Herndon. After 31 years of living in Austin, Texas, I moved 30 miles east to Bastrop, Texas (June 2001), when my wife was transferred here as senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church.  Soon after arriving, I began to piece together my station.  So far, I have
a.) improved my mobile station to a Yaesu FT-7000M with a magnet mount antenna.
b.) set up my home station in one of the parsonage's bedrooms (HF - 160-10m CW/SSB/AM, VHF - 2m FM, UHF, 70cm FM)
c.) put up a 20' chain link fence top rail pipe (assisted by Hugh, NT5O) with a dual-band J-Pole for VHF/UHF sold as a fund raiser by the local Bastrop County Amateur Radio Club.
d.) put up an 80m dipole (built in 1964, with a new, real 450-ohm ladder line purchased in 1976 . (Hugh, NT5O, helped me put it up in the trees with a slingshot, fly reel, and fishing weight.)

Being new to the area, I thought the best way to meet new folks was to get active in the local ham club. I've served since Jan. 2002 as club secretary. Here's the Bastrop County Amateur Radio Club site is at:
BCARC Web site

Not finding an active Amateur Radio Emergency Service net, I volunteered in Nov. 2001 to run a weekly net. Since then, I've volunteered to be the county's ARES Emergency Coordinator.
Our weekly net is on 443.75 MHz + (114.8 Hz) at 6:45 p.m. Sundays. That repeater is in Bastrop. The club repeater for the Smithville area is 145.35 - (114.8 Hz). When possible, the two repeaters are linked together, at least for the ARES net.

My fixed station is housed in a surplus language lab teacher's console with 3" rubber tires. This facilitates moving the station out from the wall for changes taking place in equipment, power sources, cabling, or antenna changes.  I hope to soon have a photo of it on the page.

I've been licensed since 1960 (one year as Novice station KN5FNI) with the same call sign. During that time, I've operated stations in San Angelo TX, on the USS Catamount (LSD-17) from various Pacific Ocean locations, from the US Naval Amphibious Base at Coronado CA, in Austin TX, and now in Bastrop TX.

I'm a registered professional engineer (Electrical with a BSEE from UT Austin in 1975) and  retired (August 2003) from a position as radio operations engineer with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), where I managed a system with 10,000 transceivers on both low-band VHF and high-band VHF, along with about 25 HF SSB stations across the state set up for emergency operations.

If you wish to contact me, drop a line to me at my call sign at the ARRL (dot) net forwarding service. <= I don't put in my actual address to attempt to spoil evil spam robots <grin>

Here's a photo of me, taken during our Bastrop County ARES 2003 Simulated Emergency Test in October '03.