N4XY - Edward T. Tanton N4XY

Edward T. Tanton
Mareitta, GA

QCWA # 24857
Chapter 49

Age: 68... Married (46 yrs) w/ 2 sons... my wife is Theresa; I retired in DEC 2011 from Carestream Dental where I was the Technical Advisor for Implementations. Look for me on Facebook and especially 40M CW.

Older son Rusty was an English major / Communications minor at the Univ of Tenn, and graduated in 2002. He is the father of both of my grandsons (so far.)

Chris is a Math Teacher at Mount Paran School in Kennesaw, GA and a Baseball & Basketball Coach.

My interests include 1) Reading; 2) Photography; 3) Marine & Tropical Fish; and 4) Ham Radio. Within Ham Radio, I collect 'Boat Anchor' (e.g.old/tube/etc.) equipment; and mainly to operate at less than 100W. Currently, I am designing a Master Band Pass Filter switch for publication, working on several articles about various prototyping boards, and LEDs.

I collect: keys, paddles, & bugs; GDOs; T/R Switches; Mechanical RTTY machines and TUs; and Test Equipment. I have what I believe is one of the world's largest and most extensive collection of GDOs-with 61 models from 47 different manufacturers, plus almost a dozen homebrew instruments.

I have been off the air since 2005 when a had a 'perfect storm' of calamities: 1) In DEC 2005, congestive heart failure followed by 5 bypasses (all still clear in 2013); 2) My TET Yagi on a 12ft rooftop tower blew over, destroying it; and 3) A 6in drainpipe above my basement radio desk rotted through and dumped all the effluent from the diswasher & sink/garbage disposal onto my station. Net was the complete loss of my NRD-515 receiver. Am moving the desk, and setting back up. Oh yes: I was back at work full time by the end of FEB and resumed my usual 45-50 hour weeks-almost until I retired.

I have erected a HyGain HyTower, and am still adding multi-wire connections to the DX Engineering ground plate under it. I have 8 9-ft groundrods around it. (JAN 2013.) I have to repair several favorite pieces before REALLY considering myself back on the air: a) my near-mint EFJ Ranger II needs to have its bandswitch cam set right again; and b) my favorite receiver (that I own at least) my RACAL RA6790/GM needs attention to its power supply-probably just some diodes or caps-we'll see. I will probably 'bring up' my near-mint R4-B shortly. At least four 0.1 wav radials are set.

Oh yes... I forgot to mention Daisy, our 5 year old Golden Retriever, aka UBER-Daisy!!! She is a very forward dog, who likes to look you right in the eye, demanding her large-and quite necessary-share of attention.

October 23, 2014