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Steve’s Amateur Radio Bio

Steve Friis was born and raised in Spring Valley, New York. At the age of 12, through the encouragement of his foster parents, he became interested in Ham Radio after listening to several local hams talking on the 160 meter band one night. Steve was very interested in what the conversation was about as they were talking about building a transmitter, and talking to countries in Africa and Europe. He had no idea that that was possible until then. His Foster Father, James Vogal, and his wife, Louretta, encouraged and helped him. James was also a ham, but not very active, and Louretta was an avid short wave listener. James helped him to learn the Morse code, and the man he had heard on the radio, William Jennings, helped him to learn the theory. Steve passed the Novice exam in January of 1960. Because of what he had learned as a young Ham, Steve was able to use this knowledge when he was inducted into the army.

He was placed into Signal Corp. duty in 1967, and went to Viet Nam in 1968, where he served as a long range radio operator, and also as a field repair depot engineer. Steve later became KA5DHR when he re-tested as a technician class Amateur operator in 1978. Soon after, he again upgraded to Advanced as KF5CF, and finally as an Extra class as WM5Z in 1986. He only lost interest in the ‘70s. Since that time, he has served as a teacher of Novice classes, and has been active in several nets in New Mexico. He likes to rag-chew more than anything, and you will find him operating on CW in the lower ends of 80 and 40 meters. He is a fairly regular check-in on the roadrunner net on 75 meter Phone. He also has experimented with PSK31 and several other digital modes. He builds some of his own equipment (see his article on his present project, a linear amplifier for HF) and builds his own antenna. He is the owner of VS Engineering.