[ADXA] Ex-AR Native Terry Gerdes AB5K /ex-WB5SFA, SK

[w5zn at w5zn.org]

Ron -

This is very sad news. I appreciate you posting this.

ZN

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 13, 2018, at 2:32 PM, Ron | K5XK <qrzthedx at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> ADXA Friends,
> 
> Some of you knew Terry Gerdes, AB5K.  Terry was originally WB5SFA at
> Jonesboro High School, then an alumnus of W5YM at the U of A, launching his
> career in the early 70s.
> 
> This morning I heard from fellow ADXA member Mark Whatley/K5XH that
> Terry/AB5K died early today in Belize.  Mark reports that Terry had recently
> moved from the Austin TX area to V31 with most of his gear, towers and
> antennas, with plans to get married and build an off-grid contest station.
> After getting married in northern Belize this past weekend, his new XYL
> found him in his bathroom this morning dead of an apparent heart attack.
> 
> Terry was an EE grad from the University of Arkansas and had many
> interesting jobs over the years.  I was reconnected with him in the mid-80s
> when he was in the Marshall Islands tracking missiles from Vandenberg AFB
> and having a ball operating as KX6OI, and later a V73 call.  After returning
> to the states, he had a gig with Garmin in Kansas City, and a variety of
> interesting work in the Austin area, including FlexRadio Systems, DELL, etc.
> In more recent years, he grew an impressive tower farm near Holland TX, and
> performed contract tower work, including much of the recent work for contest
> station NR5M.  AB5K may have been best known for his development work with
> the N1MM Logger and his ubiquitous AB5K PacketCluster software. He was among
> the handful of hams to solve integrating the Cluster system with the
> internet.
> 
> Terry, Mark, and I are longtime mutual friends here in Arkansas.  Terry was
> originally licensed as WB5SFA in Jonesboro in the 60s.  We were teenagers
> first learning to work DX with shiny (but unstable!) Knight-Kit gear from
> Allied Radio and a 300 ohm 15M ZL-Special yagi. He was 69. RIP Terry Gerdes,
> V31/AB5K-SK.
> 
> We are losing far too many friends in recent years!  Looking forward to
> seeing many of you in NLR on 12/1.
> 
> 73,
> 
> Ron, K5XK (ex-WA5BQI)
> Bella Vista, AR
> 
> Mark, K5XH (ex-WA5IED)
> Fayetteville, AR
> 
> 
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