Welcome to K5FNI's Ham Page

<= (I like the image, but promise that I'm not sending CW from a discone to an electrified kite!)

My name is Rick Herndon. After 31 years of living in Austin, Texas, I moved to Bastrop, Texas (June 2001).

While I was in Bastrop (2001-2004), I set up this station:
a.) mobile station Yaesu FT-7000M with a magnet mount antenna.
b.) home station (HF - 160-10m CW/SSB/AM, VHF - 2m FM, UHF, 70cm FM) using an ICOM IC-756 & IC-735, FT-2700RH, Dentron MT-2000A HF tuner, homebrew keyer & Vibroplex single-lever paddle
c.) 20' chain link fence top rail pipe (assisted by Hugh, NT5O) with a dual-band J-Pole for VHF/UHF.
d.) 80m dipole (built in 1964, with a new, real 450-ohm ladder line purchased in 1976) -- I put it up in the trees with a slingshot, fly reel, and fishing weight.

I was the Bastrop County Amateur Radio Club secretary from 2002-2004. Not finding an active local Amateur Radio Emergency Service net, I volunteered in Nov. 2001 to run a weekly net. I was the county's ARES Emergency Coordinator from 2002-2004.

Late 2004, we moved to Ganado, TX (near Victoria), where I was inactive.

In 2008, we moved to Mathis, TX (near Corpus Christi), where we now live.

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'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, Bastrop, Ganado, and now in Mathis, TX.

I'm an inactive 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.

Here's a photo of me (during our Bastrop County ARES 2003 Simulated Emergency Test).