[CQ-Contest] W4AN - 73 OM

[George Fremin III]

It is a beautiful spring afternoon here in the Texas hill country.
One of those days when I would normally be out working on my station
but, when I look at those towers and antennas all I can think about is
my friend Bill Fisher and I miss him.

I will miss the IM messages asking about how to do something in TR-Log
or for help with some broken email list on contesting.com or talk of
radio or contests to come or contests past or who will win the Tour de
France.

I guess I have known Bill about half of our lives. As it is with this
hobby most of it was via the radio and in the last 10+ years via email
or telephone. When I was in college I used to go hang out in N5KO's
office - since he worked on campus - and Bill would be calling up
after contests to compare notes with Trey.

I think the first time I got to meet Bill in person was when he came
out to N5AU's station for a visit one weekend. The next time I
remember seeing him was this time at Dayton.

> On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 11:38:49PM -0500, Scott Neader KA9FOX wrote:
> Another great memory was in May 2000, when Bill flew in for one night of
> the Dayton party at Crowne Plaza. VERY late at night, after many beers, we
> wound up on the 3rd floor of the hotel, by the elevators, just sitting
> around and talking radio, contesting, etc. It was quite a crowd... N5KO,
> K1TO, WC4E, K4OJ, N2AA, W0UA, K6NA, K5TR, plus K9NW and I. Fun, to say the
> least.

KL7RA and N0AX were there too and maybe a few others. It was worth
every moment of lost sleep several times over - the party did not
break up until Bill hitched a ride to the airport at dawn. Bill often
said that this was one of his top ham radio moments of all time.

Over the years one of the amazing things to me is that this radio
hobby is such a social event - even in a contest it is really a huge
social event as each of our friends check in to give us a contact.

When he was building his station I recall him telling me that the
operating was great fun but that he had found that he really enjoyed
building the station, that the building might even be more fun.  I
told him I understood - for I too had found that as I was building the
W5KFT station that I too really enjoyed building and designing a
station. I was looking forward to building mine - and to that end Bill
was a great person to trade trade station building tips.

Over this last year I got to operate from his station.  Even though I
have never been to Georgia Bill opened his station to me via his
remote.  Several times he and I were on the remote at the same time
and chatting via IM - it was like being in the same room and chatting
and tuning the bands and working a few guys and talking about it all
the while.  I was so looking forward to installing the remote software
at my station and letting Bill tune the bands from Texas.

This years Tour de France will not be the same - it was great fun
chatting with Bill about how riders were doing and how the race was
going during last years great race. 

The last time I talked with Bill he called to talk about some of the
plans at W8JI.  Bill and Tom were planning some really cool antennas.
Bill was planning on putting the remote at JI's and I was really
looking forward to listening in to Bill using the antennas they had
planned. And I was looking forward to hearing about what did and
didn't work after the next contest.

Bill, I miss you.

73





-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr