April and Joe Moell Welcome You

Welcome to the personal home page of April and Joe Moell, Amateur Radio callsigns WA6OPS and KØOV. We live in Fullerton, California, about 22 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

April and Joe met at the University of Nebraska as a result of their mutual interest in classical music. She was a KFMQ listener (see below) who became an announcer there before the two married and moved to California. April did graduate studies at the University of Southern California to become a Registered Occupational Therapist. For 17 years, she worked at St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton. As Director of Occupational and Recreational Therapy she added many new programs, including driving evaluations for patients recovering from stroke and other neuromuscular conditions.

One of April's favorite innovations was Rehab Radio, a weekly session on the ham radio airwaves with Occupational, Recreational and Speech Therapy patients. As the patients conversed with ham operators across the country and around the world, they combined recreation with useful therapy.

In 1979, a failure in St. Jude's telephone system prompted April to bring in help from other Orange County ham operators to link the hospital to the outside world. April quickly realized that a core group of hams with special training in the needs of hospitals would be even more valuable if such outages were to happen in the future. She started the Hospital Disaster Support Communications System and within a year, six other Orange County hospitals asked for ham radio support from the group. Today, all of the County's hospitals and the county's Emergency Medical Services Agency are tied to HDSCS, with several activations a year on average for minor and major communications outages.

April has written a book for hospital employees and administrators wanting support from local Amateur Radio operators, titled "Amateur Radio---A Communications Resource for Hospital Emergencies." As a consultant on emergency communications, she is available for informative and instructional presentations on these topics.

Joe Moell was first licensed as a Novice in 1958, callsign KNØOVV. In that year, besides creating lots of TVI on the 15-meter band to neighbors with 21 MHz IF strips in their TV sets, he went on his first hidden transmitter hunt. It was a mobile hunt in southeast Nebraska on the 75-meter band, for which he used the "wicker" antenna from the back of an AM broadcast radio and a tube-type shortwave receiver, powered from a home-built vibrator power supply. His dad, then KNØOVX, was the driver.

Joe continued in electronics, working for radio stations KFMQ-FM and KLOL/KECK-AM to pay for his engineering courses at the University of Nebraska. Since college, his career has been designing transmitters for all forms of electromagnetic waves, from low frequencies to microwaves, in broadcast, communications and radar. In 1976, he upgraded to Amateur Extra, changed callsign to KØOV, and rediscovered hidden transmitting with members of the Fullerton Radio Club. He has been going on these hunts regularly ever since. It was so much fun that he decided every ham should give it a try. To that end he teamed up with Tom Curlee WB6UZZ to write "Transmitter Hunting---Radio Direction Finding Simplified," published by TAB/McGraw-Hill. In November 1988, his monthly Homing In column made its debut in 73 Magazine. Since 2004, it has been in CQ-VHF Magazine.

About that time, Joe learned about international-rules on-foot transmitter hunting and he began efforts to popularize it in North America. He started the Homing In Web site in 1996 and began holding local radio-orienteering sessions. In 1998, he was appointed as the first USA ARDF Coordinator by the American Radio Relay League. Working with other hams in several states, he has seen radio-orienteering grow enough to support ten USA ARDF Championships and seven trips by Team USA to the ARDF World Championships.

Other things we enjoy:

• Every December since 1976, we have linked hospitalized children (and sometimes adults) to Santa Claus via the North Pole Network.

• April is leader of the oboe section in the Placentia Symphonic Band. Her oboe mentor is a member of  The Company Three Trio.

• Since 1995, we have been on several tours and cruises with the Joy of Music, led by organist Diane Bish.

• We are members of the Board of Directors of North Orange County Community Concerts Association.

• For outdoor fun, we enjoy birdwatching and have found ways for volunteer radio listeners such as ourselves to support wildlife researchers.

April's e-mail: [email protected]

Joe's e-mail: [email protected]

Go to the Homing In Web site

Go to the HDSCS Web site

This page updated 7 August 2010

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