[Moon-net] W7GBI

[Alfred Green]

It is with great sadness that I note the passing of Charlie, W7GBI, 
earlier this evening. He died peacefully, after a short illness.

It was just a few months ago that many of us joined with Charlie and his 
family to celebrate his 90th birthday. Many tales were told, it is such 
a shame that most have not been recorded. It was not just his radio 
exploits, but also an illustrious military career, that had us 
captivated. However, he was characteristically humble, not admitting 
that he had done anything special; the rest of us mortals thought 
differently.

Charlie had a long time fascination with the moon, active primarily on 
432 and 1296 with his big homebrew dish, and also had some good contacts 
on 2304 and 5760. He even had a QSO on 220 many years ago. He was 
working on getting enough power on 10GHz to add that to the list.

Although not active off the moon in the last couple of years, he was a 
strong presence on the AZ microwave front. He was the point man for most 
1296 and 10Gig tropo activity. All portable activity centered on having 
a path to Charlie, because we knew he'd be there, with his excellent HB 
system.

He was one of the pair of Arizona stations with 24Gig narrow-band rigs. 
But being the renaissance fellow that he was, he was also working on a 
pair of 813s in a big top-band AM rig.

He had a huge impact on the radio community here, and I suspect that 
there were ripples across the globe.

RIP, Charlie, my friend.

73  Alf  NU8I  DM43an