Dave was first licensed as a Novice in 1974. He had just returned from Germany, where he lived with his parents, who worked for the US Army. Dave had been exposed to amateur radio in Germany where the Ham Radio hook was set.

Dave liked electronics and he tinkered with simple circuits until he became licensed. This is when he learned to build radios and other station accessories, such as antennas, receiver preamps, and a T/R switch.

For his first job, he was hired by a ham to work as a repair tech in radio paging. He went to school and became an engineer working on telephone equipment. Dave met some hams who owned two way radio companies, and who needed new products that would give them features they could then sell. Dave started working from his garage to build innovative products to sell to these two-way dealers all over North and South America. His business increased, and this enabled him to quit his job and focus on expanding his company. As business grew, more people were hired to handle the expansion created from his first products. Today he employs 43 people and sells his products worldwide. This all started by working to meet the needs of fellow hams in the two-way business.

Dave owes his success in commercial two-way radio to his hobby of ham radio. As a devout ham, Dave encourages all of his employees to become hams. Because of his fondness of CW, he conducts code as well as theory classes. Dave is definitely an active promoter of our hobby.

Dave spends his spare time as a DXer with 335 countries confirmed. As a DXpeditioner, he has worked from many remote, and much-needed locations and has been as far south as Peter One Island and West to Baker Island, Bhutan on to Africa. Among these and others, he has been to CE0Z, TO5DX, T2DA, 3D2CW, ZL7C, 7P8DA, and 3DA0SV just to name a few. Dave is very active in SEDCO (Southeast DX and Contesting Organization). He is a major influence with this group, and is also active with other groups, North Carolina DX and Contest Club (NCDXCC), BARC and the Greer Amateur Radio Club (GARC). Dave has been instrumental in helping many Dxpeditions even though he was not an active participant in all of them.

He puts many hours into bringing more people in the hobby, and helping those who are already in, to understand it technically. We look forward to hearing Dave’s informative and entertaining presentation on DXing.