[SCCC] W6VPH SK

[Michael Tope]

Mike,

Bud told me that he complained to the power company about line voltage 
fluctuations at that QTH in the San Gabriel Valley, so they put a chart 
recorder on his panel. Bud proceeded to make sure he ran his amplifier 
really hard and frequently while the recorder was attached. When the 
power company looked over the results, Bud got his own dedicated pole 
transformer 🙂

Your description of his signal on 20 meters is consistent with the 
stories he told me about that QTH.

73, Mike W4EF............

On 7/2/2024 11:14 AM, Michael S. Mitchell W6RW wrote:
> Bud was one of my heroes when I was a teenage ham. He had a 7 element wide spaced 20 meter yagi at his San Gabriel Valley home. It would hang over the Interstate 10 when it was pointed in certain directions. In those days, a pure DXer only had a 20 meter antenna. There was no 5 Band DXCC or Challenge. When I was stationed in Italy when I was in the Navy operating the club station I1DFA, the blower motors on his amp would wipe out the pile up. He was really LOUD
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Tope <W4EF at dellroy.com>
> Sent: Jun 30, 2024 12:58 AM
> To: reflector SCCC <sccc at contesting.com>
> Subject: [SCCC] W6VPH SK
>
> I am saddened to report that Bud Ansley, W6VPH lost his long battle with Alzheimer's disease on June 19, 2024. I first met Bud when I started working in the Communications Ground System Section of JPL in 1997. Bud was an R&D technician who built RF equipment used in NASA's Deep Space Network as well as occasional prototypes for spaceflight hardware.
>
> Bud loved to talk about his contesting and DX exploits and I spent many a lunch hour in his lab talking with him about all things real ham radio. These included Bud's operations from various HF super-stations such as Dr Phil Coussen WA6ZZK's QTH in Lancaster and Jack Hachten W6TSW's high mesa QTH in Anza. Circa 1990 Bud built a 13 element 20 meter Yagi designed by Dan Bathker K6BLG at Hachten's Anza QTH. It was fixed at 15 degrees north for working Europe short path. A short article on this monster antenna along with a photo of Bud on one of the towers that supported it can be found here: (). There is also an article on this antenna in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (unfortunately it is behind a paywall): https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/88217/authors#authors (https://jplarc.org/newsletters/1996/feb/feb96.html)
>
> In addition to his many exploits on HF, Bud was an avid satellite and EME operator. On his small lot in Monrovia he had a fairly large EME array. If I remember correctly it was a pair of very long-boom 2 meter Yagis stacked horizontally along with four large 70CM yagis in an H-frame all on a common AZ-EL rotator. Bud also enjoyed building homebrew amplifiers for both HF, VHF, and UHF and from what I understand some of these amplifiers (in the style of the time he came up in) had considerable headroom 🙂. In addition to working many DXCC entities on satellite, Bud traveled to Haiti as a guest of Dan HH2MC to put HH on satellite.
>
> Bud was a veteran of the US Navy. Services will be held at 10:30 AM on Monday July 8th at the Riverside National Cemetery.
>
> 73, Mike W4EF
>
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