[CQ-Contest] Bill Fisher - one of the greats of radio contesting

[Scott R.]

What do you say when someone who has helped you out and been a
significant inspiration suddenly is gone?  W4AN was one of the greatest
contest operators who ever lived.  He always will enjoy that honor – no
matter what happens in the future, no one can ever take that away from
him.

Jeff, K4JNY, called my house late last night and left a message which I
did not listen to.  When I got on the Internet this morning, one of the
first things I saw was the announcement from W8JI on the Topband
reflector that Bill Fisher, W4AN, was a Silent Key.  I called Jeff and
he asked if I had listened to the phone message from last night.  I
hadn’t.   This morning, I’ve already talked to Jeff on the phone twice.
  We are both speechless.  It is just too incredible.  

I knew Bill for 10 years – I first met him when I was working for Ham
Radio Outlet in Atlanta in 1994 and had kept in steady contact with him
all these years that he had been building his contest station in the
north Georgia woods - including the decision to and the reasons for
dismantling it and changing directions with his contesting in the last
couple of years.  To say he was an inspiration is a gross
understatement.  I measured how well I was doing in contests by how
well he was doing.  His contest station north of Dahlonega was 75 air
miles away from my home QTH at K4JNY’s in southeast Tennessee.   I had
an exchange with another contester via email earlier this week about CQ
WW and we were discussing Bill’s contest ability – that he has set the
single op, high power all band CQ WW CW record TWICE operating from
GEORGIA.  So much for the "New England Advantage".   My comment was “If
W4AN can do it, what’s my excuse?”  What’s my excuse, indeed. 

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who was more motivated than Bill
was.  We’re talking type A personality and high intelligence directed
at his businesses, his competitive bicycle racing, and radio
contesting.   Failure was not an option.  It was win or don’t win. 
Don’t win = express appropriate sorrow, learn from errors, do something
different next time.  Win = doing something right, to be followed up on
by learning more, doing more, so you can win again.  Awesome.

I operated at and participated in the construction of his 8 tower
contest station high up in the mountains.   K4JNY I am sure did even
more in the big building phase up there around ’97-’98 or so.  Jeff was
up there every other weekend for months on end when Bill was erecting
towers and yagis.  Really I can’t say how many times I went there on
non-contest weekends to help Bill put something up, in exchange for
picking his brain about contesting, and the expectation that someday I
would either invite myself over or be invited over to use the station. 
 Jeff the same.  Bill lived in the same town as my parents (Alpharetta,
Ga.) so it was easy to drop down there, see them, and go up to Bill’s
place to do whatever needed to be done.  Tree cutting.  Stringing wire.
 Moving tower sections around.   I was up there several times while the
2 bedroom cottage was being built on the property – I remember Bill
telling me to keep an eye on the wallboard hangers to make sure they
were working and not screwing around while he up on one of the towers. 
  

I did eventually get to operate several contests as a single op and
once as multi-single at W4AN’s.  Bill confided several times to both
K4JNY and myself that he was much more jazzed by building his contest
station than actually operating it.  He hated to see his equipment be
idle and always wanted feedback on how things were working in an effort
to constantly improve the station.   I first operated there for the
1999 ARRL 10 meter contest.  Bill met me at the CSI office in
Alpharetta and we drove up to the station that afternoon.  He took a
1/2 day off of work to make sure that everything was going to operate
correctly up there for me.  I expressed some sentiment along the lines
of "gee, if I don’t do well from here, then I’m really gonna look
stupid..." – Bill said, "You’re going to win." – and he was right.  He
was ALWAYS right, there was no discussing it – he was right.  It wasn’t
arrogance, it was the confidence that came from knowing what the
station, and himself, and others were capable of.   

Bill literally told me how to operate the CW Sprint.   I told him what
I was doing, he told me I was doing it wrong.  The common theme:  he
was right.   I did it his way, scores went up – immediately.   

Bill was one of those people who never seemed distracted by anything. 
He was a guy that had a ferocious determination to do things right, do
things correct, and to win.   He spent days getting the station ready
for the ’01 CQ WW CW where Bill, myself, K4RO and W4OC were going to
take on all comers in the multi-single category.  There was no doubt in
his mind – we were going to win.  On Saturday afternoon Bill was
running Europeans at ferocious clip and simultaneously had a laptop on
the operating table to IM N6MJ and N2NL at K4XS, who were our primary
competition that year.  He was not in the least distracted by chatting
on the Internet and running Europeans at the same time, and relaying to
us by shouting across the table what they were saying from ‘XS.   We
finished second to the ‘XS guys, and Bill was very disappointed.  He
wanted to be #1, always.   

Bill was always thinking of things we never considered, whether it was
operating habits or station design.  There was more than once that I
thought he was off his rocker, so to speak, and told him so, but
invariably he was right.  K4JNY have been talking about this on the
phone all morning.   What he did, we did.  Bill’s fingerprints are all
over the contest station we have built at Jeff’s house that is my
‘home’ station, from the yagi design, to the placement of towers, to
how the antennas are driven and switched, to even how we operate the
contest.  We did a multi-single for WPX SSB there a week ago; we set
everything up the way Bill would have done it.  K4JNY said on the phone
today "Bill, flat out, taught me how to operate" – I have to say the
same thing.  I thought I knew how to contest, but I knew nothing until
I started hearing it from Bill.   Believe me, I don’t think K4JNY or
myself can ever convey how much the two of us learned from him.  We
learned so much from Bill that it’s just part of our everyday thinking
about contesting:  This is how Bill did (or would have done) it. 
Therefore, we need to do it, too.   Because Bill knows the answers
better than we do, that’s why.  End of discussion.  

Bill, 73.  What you brought to us will not be forgotten.

Best wishes and condolences,
Scott Robbins, W4PA
Jeff Yeager, K4JNY 


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Visit the Tennessee Contest Group - www.k4ro.net/tcg.html

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