HEART

Arthur White, N4TRQ

I was first licensed as an Amateur Radio Operator back in 1984 while working for a small family owned two-way radio shop in Virginia Beach. During those years, as a licensed operator, I supported many events volunteering to help support communications including the Norfolk Harborfest, Bike MS, Shamrock Marathon, and other smaller events.

In November 2015 I received a call from Ira Swartz inquiring about types of antennas best used for his upcoming HEART installations. We also discussed a tower site that my employer had for his repeaters in Driver and would it be possible for them to grant HEART access to place a repeater at this site. Unfortunately, the owners of the tower site would not permit HEART access stating they feared that if they allowed one group access others would follow asking to be on the site. However, this did not deter Ira’s search for viable sites.

Another site was being remodeled from an office building to a residential building and the company’s equipment was being relocated. I was working part time with C. R. Services relocating our equipment and the owner Pat wanted to assist Amateur Radio in the area so he used this opportunity to find a new home for the now 147.075 and 442.450 repeaters that are licensed to KC2HTT, also a C. R. Services employee. This gave Pat two licensed Amateur Radio operators and employees who could assist in the maintenance of the repeaters.

During this time I assisted Ira in developing and installation of their linking system which posed several challenges. All were overcome, from getting yagis pointed correctly and working on getting reliable link signal levels to overcoming interference from the existing RF equipment at Riverside Regional Medical Center. I assisted with finding an adequate duplexer that would work for their latest repeater site that was installed at Walter Reed Hospital that was experiencing bad desense from the co-located hospital paging transmitter.

I have worked over the page 5 years with Paula and Ira assisting them with various technical questions and smaller projects all for building HEART to what it is today as well as into the future. They are always looking and thinking how to make things better and utilizing and implementing the latest tools and technology and listening to their Team Members all for the betterment of the organization.