W4HBY Maurice 'Maury' Shumaker Manassas, VA QCWA #13925 Chapter 91

Maury developed an interest in radio after completely dismantling an old AM radio when he was 11 or 12 years old and was not able to put it back together again. This led to many library visits in Bradley, Illinois where early versions of the ARRL handbook were available. Next came the building of crystal sets which were used to listen to WLS in Chicago and then on to building one and two tube superregenerative shortwave receivers.

In his freshman year in Bradley-Bourbonnais he had the advantage of having two teachers who were ham radio operators. One, Bill Burnett, was the schools music teacher and also a former maritime radio operator. He introduced ham radio to Maury but then in his sophmore year, Durwood Canham, K7JWI today and formerly W9LCH. Durwood tutored Maury in theory and law and Maury obtained his novice license, WN9QAY, in November of 1951. Less than a year later he successively the general class exam and the 'N' was dropped from his callsign.

Maury went on to graduate from Valparaiso Technical Institute, class of '55 and then spent a year with WSBT-TV in Southbend, Indiana and then WKAN in Kankakee, Illinois. He was drafted into the US Army in 1957 and was assigned to the Army Pictorial Center, Long Island City, New York where he was the video and transmitter engineer in the Army's airborne television unit.

After leaving the Army in April of 1959, he went west and joined the Glen L. Martin Company in Denver, Colorado as a aerospace ground equipment design engineer. Maury was involved with the Titan 1, II and III programs, was the systems reliability project engineer for the Viking Lander mission to Mars in 1975/1976, and then held various management positions in what by then had become the Martin Marietta Corporation's Astronautics Group in Denver.

Maury retired after 40 years with the company as Technical Director of a classified space program in Reston, Virginia. Maury is now performing consulting services to the Department of Defense and NASA in northern Virginia.

Maury is active on HF using all modes from both his home and mobile as well as operating on VHF and UHF bands. Look for him around 1945 KHz on AM, 7178 and 7185 KHz LSB or, on the Northern Virginia FM Association's 146.19/146.79 repeater.

November 08, 2014