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

[Ron | K5XK]

BTW, sad as AB5K's death is, it's somewhat comforting to know that Terry's
death wasn't related to a tower accident.  Here are pics from his visit to
NW Arkansas last year, beginning with a BBQ dinner at B&B BBQ in
Fayetteville and including shots of the climbing belt and AB5K doing a
little work on Mark's tower before they left for Hamvention 2017.

https://goo.gl/photos/cjBWBNMNa2VAMBt76

73/DX, 'XK


-----Original Message-----
From: Ron | K5XK [mailto:qrzthedx at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2018 1:33 PM
To: 'adxa'
Subject: Ex-AR Native Terry Gerdes AB5K /ex-WB5SFA, SK


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