Topband: K6SE SK

[Jon Zaimes AA1K]

 From Earl's listing on QRZ.com:

Previous Callsigns:

W8DGP - 1955 to 1968

KL7FRY - 1966 to 1967

W5RTQ - 1968 to 1976

K6SE - 1976 to present

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Topbanders.com lists Earl as having 197 countries on Top Band and 35 zones.

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Earl was one of my early inspirations on 160. When he was W5RTQ in the 
late '60s, Earl wrote a QST article on shunt-feeding towers -- later 
reprinted in the ARRL Antenna Anthology -- and it was this info that 
helped me and many others build an effective vertical radiator for Top 
Band.

I first worked Earl sometime around 1979 when I was in Connecticut. I'd 
get home from work just before European sunrise, when most on the East 
Coast were asleep. Earl was up late in California, looking for new ones 
from Europe. We'd swap notes on DX -- this was long before packet or 
chat boards. Earl filled me in on what was doing in the Pacific, and I'd 
give him tips on activity from Europe. His help through the '80s led to 
many a new country for me. He was picking up new ones too, from a much 
harder coast -- I think he was the second from the West Coast to earn 
DXCC on 160. In between chasing DX, Earl was a wealth of ideas on 
antennas and we enjoyed many late-night rag chews after the sun came up 
in Europe.

Earl had a very big signal from California -- notes on his 2-element 
phased array were widely circulated among Topbanders at the time. He had 
two 68-foot towers, with a tribander on one and a 2-element 40-meter 
beam on the other. He raised and lowered the beams on the masts until he 
got both towers to resonate on the same frequency. While fairly 
commonplace today, there were very few multielement arrays on 160 in 
those days.

More recently Earl wrote “Flags, Pennants and Other Ground-Independent 
Low-Band Receiving Antennas” in July 2000 QST. And of course he was a 
frequent contributor to the Topband reflector on this and other topics.

I finally had the pleasure of meeting Earl in person about two years ago 
at Dayton.

Rest in peace OM, we'll miss you on Top Band.

73/Jon AA1K