Terry has a long history with electronics and radio. His first project, with his life-long friend Richard Darden, also a ham operator- AD9K, was to build a 'television set' in Afternoon Kindergarten at age 5. As usual Terry and Richard used a cardboard box, cut a hole in the front and pretended to be in a television studio. Unlike the pretend television sets made by other children at that age, Terry and Richards 'television set' had inside in the corner, a number of old vacuum tubes stuck in a small tray of modeling clay.
Around age 8, Terry built a crystal radio set from a design in a 'science for children' book series his parents bought for him. The radio used a small piece of pencil lead tied to a bent open safety pin contacting the surface of a Gillette Blue razor blade with a tuning coil of wire wrapped around an Quaker Oaks oatmeal box. With earphones, it was possible to receive AM radio from stations like WTMJ in Milwaukee. The radio bug had bit.
In the early teen years, Terry and Richard discovered Allied Radio in Chicago and handheld Citizens Band walkie-talkies like the Allied Radio's Knight-Kit C-100 and C-555 radios.
These radios generated only 100mw (0.1 watt) of transmitter power and signals could only travel about a mile in ideal conditions.
In the mid-teen years Terry ordered and built a Knight-Kit Space Spanner receiver from Allied Radio.
This was the first significant electronic project that Terry built. It had three tubes and numerous other parts. It involving soldering the components together and that was an interesting experience. Terry actually saw a Knight-Kit Space Spanner for sale at a ham radio flea market in Palm Springs in 2017 and was sorely tempted to buy it but resisted. The Space Spanner got Terry started in listening to International Short Wave stations such as the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Radio Moscow. Terry collected reception verification cards, called QSL Cards, from stations that he heard. He probably had 30 or so.
The Space Spanner was very limited in its capability and Terry replaced it in the last years before going to university with first a Hammerlund HQ-180A and later a Drake R-4B.
These two radios introduced Terry to amateur radio. The ability for amateur radio operators (hams) to talk to people around the world was very exciting. However, to be a ham and transmit, a license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was required and while the theory part of the test was quite simple for a science student like Terry, there was a Morse Code requirement. Terry bought an Army surplus J-38 telegraph key and built a Knight-Kit code practice oscillator but was never able to master even the 5 words per minute temporary Novice Class license requirement let alone the 13 words per minute requirement for a permanent General Class license.
That situation lasted for decades until one day Terry was browsing the electronics section (Dewey Decimal 621.3) at the Santa Monica Public Library and found a Amateur Radio Relay League ARRL Ham Radio License Manual and discovered that the Morse Code requirement had recently been eliminated. The decades-old dream was possible.
Starting in 2007, Terry passed the Technician Class (entry-level), General Class, and finally in 2010 Extra Class, the highest level.
When licensed, Terry was living in the FCC area 6, and ordinarily would have a call sign containing that digit. Terry elected to get a vanity call sign, from the FCC area 9, K9TAD- the call sign he should have had 50 years before.