Jerry Haigwood - W5JH

Jerry was first licensed at age 13 as WN9NZA. After a year he lost that license (back then you had to upgrade within one year) and the station set idle for a 5 years. After high school he again became licensed as a Novice – WN9BIU. But again he did not upgrade (starting to see a pattern here…). After a couple of years he again obtained a Novice license as WN9LOM. This time he advanced to a Technician-WB9LOM. After two months he advanced to General but failed the Advanced test. After another few months, he passed the Advanced class test and was content for several years. Some time about 32 years ago he was “chided” into passing the 20WPM code and Amateur Extra class license as KY4Z. While living in Arizona, he obtained the vanity call W5JH. He claims to have held more Novice licenses than anyone else! Can anyone else beat his record?

He attended 6 different colleges before obtaining a BS in Computer Science degree from National University, San Diego, CA. He has worked as an Engineer for several Aerospace companies. He is retired from Rockwell International and also retired from Honeywell Aerospace. He specialized in Flight Control and Flight Management Software. His last 3 years was spent working as a consultant to GE Aerospace and Honeywell Aerospace.

After retiring in August of 2010, Jerry and his wife Patsy moved to Gilmer, Texas to be near 11 of their 19 grandchildren. His typical day is spent playing radio and playing with his grandchildren.

Jerry has been designing antennas most of his amateur radio life. He and Robert Stein (W6NBI) co-authored a popular amateur radio yagi design program – DL6WU based on the yagi design work of Gunter Hoch (DL6WU). This program has been used, stolen, mutilated and claimed by other people as their original work. However, all outlaw versions started with the work of Bob Stein and Jerry. Most recently Jerry has been playing with Dipoles, Double Zepps, Extended Double Zepps, and Half Extended Double Zepps. He and patsy live on an acre and a half with 40+ mature Oak trees (AKA antenna supports).