Welcome To The KZ4G Homepage
Hello Fellow Radio
Amateurs:
My
name is Dave Vest and my call is KZ4G, I live in northeastern Kentucky in the
city of Flatwoods and many of you have known me for several years, this is my
story of how I came into Ham Radio. Back
in Jr high school I become interested in radio only listening to short wave,
then I started to build things and lo and behold I built a short wave radio and
I landed on 75 Meters and there it took hold. One of my teachers in high school
was a ham operator and after this I entered the US Air Force and there after
attending tech school they made me a radio tech. Working in the US Air Force
radio operator school and with several of the guys there being amateurs I had to
convert to sound of the Morse code and learn to send and receive it instead of
seeing the wig wag flag.
In
May 1951 I became WN5TXV and some time later, less than a year I become W8LMF
this was my call until 1959 when it expired as I had gotten a married person and
started a family leaving little time for ham radio.
Then in 1962 I went and took the exam again and got my call back as
W8LMF and remained active until moving from West Virginia to Kentucky in 1967
there they gave ma a call of WB4JDR (just darn rotten) as a secondary station
license, once I officially moved and renewed the FCC gave me K4HRF.
The next time I renewed they ask if I ever had a call I wanted back and I
said W8LMF and at this time I become KZ4G, which is the only original call I
ever had.
This
brings us up to date.
In the pictures you can see that I truly like to work cw as I use a Ten Tec Triton 4.
The
picture below is a Harvey Wells TBS-50 that was the first commercial built
transmitter I ever owned along with the National NC-57 they both still work but
not as good as the Triton, I used to build a lot but now can’t see as good as
I could at one time so not much going on at this time in the line of building.
At the time of this writing, I am
using an Icom IC736 and
for
antennas at my home station I have a Mosley TA-33 beam and a duel band vhf/uhf
along with dipoles for 160, 80 and 40 meters.
Through out my ham radio career I was active in the ARRL field organization I was the first Section Traffic Manager (STM) for the state of Kentucky and also the last Section Communication Manager (SCM) and the first Section Manager (SM) all taking place during the naming of different offices of the ARRL. I also served in West Virginia as route manager and was one of the founders of the Tri-State Hamfest in Huntington. That was held a Camden Park and also served as president of Tri-State radio club in Huntington and later served as president of the River Cities Amateur Radio Club in Ashland, Kentucky. There I taught classes in amateur radio at the community college. I’m sure some of the guys who will be reading this possibly attended some of those classes.
Well
it is hard for me to believe but at the Dayton Hamvention 2000 I celebrated my
50th year in ham radio. It
is hard to believe I have been active on the bands for that period of time,
seems like only yesterday I was just getting started.
Dayton
Hamvention and I both celebrating 50 years in ham radio.
Just
think 50 years as a Ham. Is that great or what….
Check Out The Link Below To See What My Son Has To Say About His Elmer.
Click here to goto picture page
73
de Dave KZ4G