bob-bio

My radio life began at age 7 in the Cub Scouts when i discovered crystal radios...look at the scout
manual here. I had always enjoyed tuning around with the Zenith and Arvin shortwave radios in the
house, but here was a chance for me to actually build my own radio. At this point, I need to say that
if it weren't for the excellent help I received from the various scout volunteers, it never would have
happened.
Of course, as time progressed, so did my passion for radio...look at the certificates than many
SWL's obtained.

From there it was on to various technical schools to study electronics and product design.

I've worked in the electronics, Acoustical, and Mechanical fields since 1963 variously as a Designer,
Project Engineer, Chief Engineer, Director of Product Design, and VP of Product Design for three
corporations, and opened an Engineering Consulting company in 1982, and hold several US
Patents. Since then we have branched out to AmComm, which is focused on technical
communications systems, SIGINT and COMSEC and TSCM.

The Day job not being enough punnishment, in the early 1980s I opened a gunsmithing shop as my
night (hobby) job. That morphed into a prototype machine shop for local businesses. And that
knitted seamlessly with our electronic business as an source for chassis, brackets, wave guides,
antenna and tower hardware - even the in-laws brought their lawnmower blades for sharpening.

I was the president of The Stratford Amateur Radio CLUB (SARC / W1ORS) for 3 years, and now
President Emeritus, club station W1ORS. Also past Communications Officer, CW and theory
(license upgrade) instructor, Secretary, Treasurer, and Historian. I enjoy HF phone/CW, VHF/UHF
experimentation, EME R&D, and Radio Astronomy. I'm an incurable telegraph key collector and
have a decent collection of Government surveillance and intercept receivers.

IA few years before the new Millennium, we opened a small publishing company. I've written a few
books: learning the skill of Morse code, study techniques, learning problems; also an account of US
Railroad Telegraphy from mid-1800s to early 1900s; and a short course for Morse learning
(Mneumonic) for the handicapped, and some music books.
I published several books on other Ham Radio activities, Railroad telegraphy, and extensive
publishings on the New York, New Wave music revolution, the Punk music movement, and
specifically, Debbie Harry and the band "Blondie." The Blondie Review magazine averaged 52
pages per issue and ran for almost 11 years. We also edited and published the 512-page book,
Blondie, From Punk to the Present - a massive Punk and New Wave reference book, which is now
being used as a text book in some collages with courses on women in music.

I spent 2 years in the US Army attached to the Signal Corps and got to enjoy all the expensive radio
equipment they let me play with -- for free. I worked with crypto gear and learned a lot about
NORAD, CONAD, SIGINT, COMSEC, Signal Intercept, Surveillance and Countermeasures, and our
Air Defense systems. My third year was in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division. They took away
my crypto cipher book and gave me a rifle. I really preferred the radios over the M16.

I'm always building something and experimenting at the bench; sometimes the stuff works!
Sometimes I get pretty blue smoke. However, I have made some pretty good progress developing
RF preselector circuits to precondition raw RF directly from the antenna (receive only) and dynamic
noise abatement preconditioning circuits, and have done some additional development work with
various forms of AM demodulation systems -- fun and rewarding. It's truly amazing how much more
you can hear when you feed your receiver a healthy diet. Yes, DSP is great, I use an all DSP JRC
NRD-545 or Racal RA6790/GM for receive and my Kenwood TS-940S for transmitting (hard to
beat Kenwood transmit audio). But even with DSP, a good preconditioner/preselector makes all the
difference in the world. Gee, life is good.

For the time being, I have some of the latest Preconditioner/Preselector, Dynamic Noise
Management, and Synchronous (Detector) Demodulation technology posted at my SWL site.

CHECK OUT THESE SITES:

HAM, Key collecting & Radio Astronomy: http://www.bobsamerica.com/n1kpr.html

SWL, AM (MF), Shortwave SWL-DX listening & Electronics: http://www.bobsamerica.com/swl.html