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Manager - VE3ROO
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Friend : Walt Heineman (W2QR (W2AQR))

Walt was an outstanding operator and Elmer, as well as a vital connection to a now-dim past. I first met him in 1977 when I was 13 years old, and he a sprit 65. Originally licensed simply as 2AQR (yup, no "W"), Walt had been a CW op during WW2, and while I know he held his First Class Phone & Teletype licenses, I was never quite sure what he did for a living.

After I took my novice test at his house, he looked at it and fired up his Swan 500CX for me. I blew it, of course. A month later we worked the graveyard shift at Field Day. I still recall how his pipe was mere embers, his eyes closed, and with our TR4-C, we did not have much of a CW filter. I might say to myself, "What section was that?" and this seemingly sleeping seer would intone, "South Carolina," or whatever the right answer was. By the end of that contest I could comfortably copy 25 wpm; no better way to improve one's CW than that.

An icon at the Irvington Radio Amateur's Club (K2GQ), he followed that club's move to Roseland, NJ, where it kept "Doc Schwab's" call. Active in OOTC and top-band CW, he was to be heard on the air regularly till just a very few months before his passing.

He was also active in the West Orange Repeater System, lending his call to its name (The W2QR Repeater System) and perhaps to its ID. I never did know for sure on that one, but after I obtained Walt's call in 2004 I did some searches on it, and found that this repeater system was called "The W2QR Repeater System" and had been for years.

Thus after some introspection I relinquished the callsign so the repeater system could obtain it. While he was a brass pounder and might have liked that the call was continuing in that service, when I leared that Walt's son had said that Walt wanted this club to have his callsign, I felt the best way to honor his memory would be to comply with his wishes.

Walt will be missed.

Contributed by : Arthur R. Trampler (KC2G)

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Friend's CallsignW2QR (W2AQR)
Friend's NameWalt Heineman
Date DeceasedOctober 12, 2000
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