Dean, AC0S, was an avid contester, DXer, and all-around great ham. In recent years he was a frequent member of the J6DX contest team. I'll miss Dean's positive attitude, and his desire to seek out the advice of others to improve his contesting skills. 73, dear OM.
Dean was a true Ham and good friend to many of us in the Denver area. He had served in the Navy as a Radioman and retired from US West. Dean had been a popular part time salesman at the Denver HRO. He was an active member of the Denver Radio Club,and the QCWA. Dean was 66. He was being operated on for Cancer and had a fatal heart attack. He will be missed.
Dean is the reason I have the call I have right now, W0QL. I had decided it was time to make a change and get a new call. I wanted a great CW call so I went through the available list and signed up for K0IH. Dit-dit, di-di-di-dit. Sounded perfect to me. When I told Dean about it, he said "That's the worst CW call you could get. You'll spend every QSO explaining it because no one can count dits. It'll come back as SS or worse." So Dean sent me back to the list to pick one that would be hard to get wrong when someone hears it. A Q and an L. Those are pretty hard letters to mess up in CW. Thanks, Dean. Dean always helped me a lot. I met him at a DRC meeting years ago and kept contact through HRO. I only saw him a few minutes each time but I always came away with a new perspective on something. One day I asked him how he gets away with drilling a new hole in his house for coax when he wants to add an antenna. Dean said he didn't. The first thing he does when he moves into a new house is drill a 4 inch hole for his wires. Then he never has to drill another hole as long as he lives there. I will miss Dean greatly. He added a lot of happiness to all our lives, mine included. He was a treasure that we shall all miss a lot. Dean, I know how you love CW and I just hope you have a key with you up there, ole buddy. Good luck and God bless you, Dean. I wonder if he has drilled that new 4 inch hole yet.
Dean, AC0S was an accomplished CW operator and participated on a number of world class CQWWDX efforts with SWODXA from St. Lucia (J6) in the 1990's. He helped thousands of new hams with equipment selection while at HRO Denver and had extrordinary patience. He was one of the people that made ham radio a pleasure to participate in. He will be missed.
I met Dean only a few times at the Denver HRO and remembered him as being a kindly man. He would joke about my keyer being oriented the wrong way, 'paddles are supposed to go up and down!'
I had remembered telling him that I had a degree in engineering and mathematics and that he had a great callsign, ArcCosine. A year or so ago I was looking around the callsign servers for an easier call for CW and noticed his call missing. I tracked down what had happened to Dean and upon finding that he was a Silent Key; I struggled with requesting his former call. In April of 2004 I decided that I was going forth with the request and checked with a couple of people who knew him to see if there were any objections. The general consensus was, 'It would be nicer for someone who actually new him to receive his former call than some stranger in a distant state.' That sealed it; I put in the request to FCC.
I am now AC0S (formally N0YGY). Though I may not have the same impact Dean had on the amateur community at large, I hope to carry on his tradition of being a helpful and considerate operator.
73 Dean, es gb
Cheers,
Colin