ARRL Illinois Section Manager to Present at February Club Meeting

Thomas Beebe, W9RY, is the Illinois Section Manager. He will be joining us via Zoom at the next club meeting on Thursday, February 17, 2022. The meeting will be hybrid and take place in person and via Zoom.

He was originally licensed as WN9QXW over 56 years ago. He is an active member of most of the amateur radio clubs in the southern part of the state as well as being active in ARES and the National Traffic System. In addition to serving as the Illinois Section Manager he holds appointments as an Official Emergency Station, ARRL licensed instructor, ARRL Field Instructor, Volunteer Examiner, Volunteer Examiner Liaison, and AUXCOMM operator. He is also Intro to AUXCOMM instructor, MARS operator and NWS Skywarn spotter.

He holds a PhD and is a retired university administrator as well as a past corporate CEO. He is also a strong proponent of recruiting young people to the radio hobby and frequently talks with young people about amateur radio.

In his spare time he enjoys operating CW on an Icom 718, a FT857 for NTS messages and tinkering with technology. He runs a Raspberry Pi (single board computer) powered 2 meter Winlink Illinois Digital Emergency Network gateway on 145.610 mHz as part of ARES and his PSK, RTTY, Olivia, ARDOP, and VARA modes run on other Raspberry Pi’s connected to a TS-50 and FT-857.