I'm Dave Heil. I
was born February 28, 1949 south of Wheeling in the little Ohio River town
of Glen Dale, West Virginia.
My wife and I returned to the
United States in mid-2000 after having spent over a decade-and-a-half
with the U.S. Department of State. I was twice assigned
to the American Embassy in Helsinki, Finland
and have had embassy tours in Bissau,
Guinea-Bissau;
Freetown, Sierra Leone ,
Gaborone, Botswana and
Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania, arriving three weeks after the embassy was bombed
in August, 1998.
My "ex-calls" through the years include OH2 and OH0/K8MN ('85-'87 and '95'-98), J52US ('88-'89), 9L1US ('90-'91), A22MN ('92-'95) and 5H3US (1999-2000). I was also a member of the week-long OH0MD/OJ0 Market Reef operation in July, 1986.
I've been on the air since 1963 and have held the call K8MN since 1977. The callsign honors the gentleman who helped me become a ham--Andy Timberlake W8MN (sk) of Hinton, West Virginia. I grew up in Lake Worth and Miami, Florida, in Lexington, Kentucky and in the southern West Virginia towns of Hinton and Oak Hill. Cincinnati, Ohio and nearby Fort Thomas, Kentucky were home for nearly twenty years before I began work in the Foreign Service.
My wife Leila and I make our
home a little south of the village of Cameron,
West Virginia. Cameron has a population of about 1200. It is
located about thirty miles or so southeast of Wheeling on U.S. route 250.
Our home, Signal Hill is high on a hilltop about 3.5 miles south of the
town near the Pennsylvania state line. Cameron was once
a bustling rail center and hub for the area's farmers. It boasted
a machine tool company, a pottery mill and a glass plant. These days
the town retains a foundry operation and a number of small businesses.
The second tower is 70 feet of
Rohn 25 supporting a Cushcraft 2 element 40m yagi and topped by a
homebrew duoband yagi with 2 elements each for 12 and 17m. The 12 meter
portion is of the "parasleeve" design and is "shock excited" by its driven
element's proximity to the 17m driven element. A Hazer tram system
has been installed for raising and lowering the yagis and Tailtwister rotor.
The tower supports a coaxial inverted "L" antenna for 160m and a conventional
inverted "L" for 80m. Roughly 6,000 feet of radials
have been installed for the latter two antennas. Among the
miscellaneous antennas are a 5 foot diameter shielded receiving loop for
80 and 160m hidden amidst a thicket of quince bushes. A W1FB preamp
gives the loop a boost. My chimney supports a five element yagi for
two meters and a six element yagi for 70 cm FM.
It isn't all amateur radio with me...
Click here to see a few of the things I'm
interested in.