[CQ-Contest] AA5VU, SK

[Mike]

Thanks Ken for the news about Dick, AA5VU, as sad as it is.

When I saw the announcement from Ken about Dick's passing, the first thing
that came to mind was the first time I worked Dick.  It was in a contest
and thought I had copied Dick's call wrong and sent the exchange using
"AA5AU".  Dick came back to me and said his call is "AA5VU AA5Very Ugly".
At this point I figured it would be more fun to chat with this AA5VU rather
than keep up the exchange rate, so sent back to him, "sorry thought you
were a friend of mine AA5AU AA5Awful Ugly".  Dick's response was that he
had worked AA5AU earlier and had a few others who came back with AA5AU
instead of AA5VU.

As would have it, as soon as Dick and I finished the exchange, Don, AA5AU,
jumped in letting us know that he had listening to our exchange and
commented on the phonetics I had used for his call😊.

That first exchange with Dick and all that surrounded it seared into my
mind a bit of a deeper friendship than just a casual contest contact.  From
then on whenever I would work Dick in a contest, I always thought of our
first QSO.    I think Dick had the same feeling as we usually took a little
extra time to send a "73" or "gl" as part of our contest exchange.

Thanks for all the QSOs, Dick, rest in peace my friend.

  73,
  Mike, K4GMH

On Sat, Jan 26, 2019 at 2:51 PM Kenneth E. Harker <kenharker at kenharker.com>
wrote:

>      It is with sadness that we learned yesterday afternoon about the
> passing of Dick Kriss AA5VU. Dick was a long-time active member of the
> Central Texas DX & Contest Club (CTDXCC). Primarily a DXer, Dick was active
> in RTTY contesting and was our local expert for anything related to digital
> on MacOS.
>
> https://www.qsl.net/aa5vu/
>
>      Yesterday, Dick was performing some routine maintenance on his home
> tower when he lost consciousness.  EMS were able to lower him to the
> ground, but were unable to resuscitate him.
>
>
> https://www.statesman.com/news/20190125/unconscious-man-pulled-from-rooftop-radio-tower-ems-medics-say
>
>    RIP OM.
>
> —
> Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
> kenharker at kenharker.com
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