Topband: W7LR

[Lee STRAHAN]

Tree,
  Would you please pass along Bob W7LR's new address. Or a phone number if you have it. Bob and I corresponded regularly as he was one of the very first that I designed a receiving array for quite a long time ago. It was a broadside end fire array 320 feet wide. He later bought a 4 square system and put it up. He would ask questions regularly through e-mail and share how he and Coby were doing. It must have been over a year ago when the e-mails stopped. He was still talking then about wanting to work DX and moving his arrays around. He thought maybe just putting the 4-square up after the horses were moved as it was easier. He was doing all this in his late 80's and early 90's.  I think it was about a year ago when he said it was getting harder to figure the arrays out anymore as he had a printed out stack of e-mails from me that was 2 inches thick.
      A funny story about his first Hi-Z RX array he put up with my electronics. He worked his tail off putting up the verticals and stringing the cables etc. He finally settled down to try it out. He thought it was not working as good as his phased verticals and Beverages for top-band. He spent hours and days checking everything out. Then one day much later after 160 was wide open and he worked many many stations with his Beverage really bringing in the stations better than any other antenna, he e-mailed and said to me he owed me an apology, he said he had miswired his home made antenna switch and he had really been using the BSEF array and it was in fact outplaying any of his other RX antennas. He was pretty excited that all the work had paid off. We got a good laugh out of that.
    Before I got overloaded commercially making Hi-Z a business I started writing a book about high impedance technology with antennas. I sent him a draft and he was kind enough to look it over with suggestions for improvement. He obviously spent many hours looking at my drafts making school teacher type notes.  Not many knew it but he also managed a mountain top repeater site commercially as well.
   He is a great guy when you get to really know him. It would be awesome to contact him again.
   Thanks Tree.
Lee   K7TJR   OR

-----Original Message-----
From: Topband <topband-bounces at contesting.com> On Behalf Of Tree
Sent: Saturday, December 1, 2018 8:01 AM 
To: 160 <topband at contesting.com>
Subject: Topband: W7LR

Many of you have probably noticed that W7LR has not been in the pileups during the past year.  I visited Bob exactly a year ago and Cobi as well - Cobi had reached 100 years.  Bob is close behind.

Cobi passed away on April 1st and Bob has moved into an assisted living facility around the same time.  His station is QRT.  I chatted with him yesterday and it was good to hear his voice.

If anyone is interested in sending Bob a note - I can provide the address.

Tree N6TR
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