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Lee was licensed in 1978 as WD5CID as an Advanced class while
living in Texas but has been inactive since the mid-80's. Computers and the
Internet took over as Lee's primary tech hobby. However, the Internet is becoming
less attractive, and Lee was looking for something more. That's when ham radio
re-emerged, and Lee finally buckled down and studied for the Extra class exam,
which he passed with flying colors on April 28, 2002. Shortly thereafter Lee
applied for a vanity call and received KY8T
in July, 2002.
Lee's interest in ham radio was rekindled by his four
wheeling buddies in the Wolverine
Four Wheelers and the Great Lakes Four
Wheel Drive Association who use 2m equipment to coordinate trail rides.
Lee has been four wheeling actively since 1997 and loves it. CB is the predominant
band for four wheelers, and Lee has one in his Jeep, but CB's limited range,
noise, and rowdy users cry out for a better alterative. As time passed Lee
became more and more interested in becoming radio active again and installed
a long-unused dual bander his Jeep Wrangler.
Lee also uses an motor home to tow his Jeep to four wheeling events, and he decides that a compact all-band rig would be just the thing for it. Lee decided on the FT-100D because of its compact size and mating ATAS-100 screwdriver antenna.
Lee spent much of his "lost" computer years developing and distributing a shareware Morse code teaching program called Super Morse. Super Morse became quite widely used. Lee started writing the program to improve his code speed to the then required 20 WPM for an Extra class license. Although Lee's code speed eventually approached 20 WPM, he was so busy upgrading and supporting the program that he never took the code test. In the meantime the code requirement was reduced to 5 WPM, and Lee finally upgraded in 2002.
