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Manager - VE3ROO
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Friends Detail

Friend : Robert Ferguson (N7BF)

Robert Was A good friend & elmer. He always had time to help. Always had the highest class license + first class comercial. He started me in amateur radio in 1960.

Contributed by : Roy G. Lake (K7PGK)

Friend : Alan Burgstahler (N7BF)

Alan Burgstahler (N7BF)



I first met Alan about 12 years ago at Seaside. Our wives had just met at a “Women's event” and escaped that together. He did not get interested in getting back on HF until 2003, when he bought an IC-730 at Puyallup. That gave way to the Yaesu FT-920 which was the result of one of his voluminous research projects. Most of those projects are still in the files at the house.



Originally a 20 wpm Extra, in his teens, he felt that he needed some brush-up for cw contesting and proceeded on that. He commuted to downtown Seattle on the Sounder train from Sumner each weekday. He recorded the ARRL code practice sessions on MP3 and listened to those each way each day. I am sure if anyone overheard it and asked him what he was doing, he would have told them more than they wanted to know about code and ham radio. He did additional training for pileups with “Morse Runner” from Ve3nea.



He plunged into CW, RTTY and some SSB contesting with both feet. The SSB was so infrequent that he got a comment from another frequent contester of “So, you do have a microphone”(AL1G). He chuckled about that.

In the 5 years and two weeks that he operated, he contacted 34,029 stations. That is an average of 6805.8 contacts per year. Anyone that operated with him soon realized that they needed another radio since his passion kept him in the seat, operating. He also explored other digital modes, OLIVIA, Hellscheiber, etc.



At some point he decided that he wanted to go to the WWDXC meeting and I picked him up downtown to take him and introduce him. He also plunged in there wholeheartedly as the Secretary for the past few years.



He did DXCC then went on for 40m, 20m 15m, CW, RTTY, SSB. Did an easy 100 countries per year for one of the WWDXC awards, repeatedly. Rookie of the year in 04, NAANY award holder also. Won the 7th call area in Japanese amateur radioteletype league annual contest. Various other plaques adorn the walls of his garage shack where he lived some weekends.



He discovered N1MM software and turned me on to it one November. I called to see if he was really going to do CW Sweepstakes on paper. He got me going on it, away from NA, as a result. He soon figured out how to modify the Macros for each individual contest and passed that on. His attention to the fine details of contesting kept him constantly revising the files to better operate each contest.

He found the DXLAB suite of free software and also passed that on.



The Cancer came in 05 and he fought it valiantly for the past three years until there was no more Chemo that would help him and it finally won over his seemingly indomitable spirit. He was a large but gentle man that was always willing to share what he had discovered, we will miss him

Contributed by : Rick Smith (KT7G)

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Friend's CallsignN7BF
Friend's NameAlan Burgstahler
Date Deceasedaugust 18, 2008
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