W3GWM, George Miller, Candidate for Vice President in Dec 2017 Election
Name:
George Miller
QTH:
Wyalusing, PA
ECARS History:
- Member
Since:
2012. Lifetime
member #20743
- Previous
Offices/Duties: NCS
- Current
Net Control Operator: Yes, 3-5 times
a week
Other Amateur Radio History:
I became interested in SWL using my grandfather’s SW radio when I was
around 10. Ham Radio caught my
attention when I was in the US Coast Guard assigned to an icebreaker in
Arctic and Antarctic waters between 1967-1970 when Hams made phone
patches home for me. I thought it might be fun to be a Ham, but had no
chance to get a license while on duty to remote areas on the USCGC
Southwind. Ultimately, I got my first license
in 1979 as KA3DZD while living in Central Pennsylvania. I began
listening and checking into ECARS when I got my General License in 1980
as N3CJP. As
I moved around the country, I was licensed as KA4KA, KF8PZ when I earned
my Advanced Class License and finally W3GWM when I became licensed as an
Extra Class and received my current vanity call sign.
I’m a
long time member of the ARRL and have appointments as Official Relay
Station, Official Emergency Station and as a Digital Relay
Station. I am a Volunteer Examiner for the ARRL and active in ARES and
RACES in NE PA. The Eastern Pennsylvania Emergency Phone and Traffic Net,
which I manage, was selected as the first Section Level net to affiliate
with RRI this year. I’m the Net Manager for the Eastern
Pennsylvania Emergency Traffic Net, which is the EPA Section SSB Net,
and the the Assistant Net Manager for the 3rd
Region Net. In 1982, I worked with the Director of the
Harrisburg Office of the National Weather Service to form the first
Skywarn organization in Pennsylvania.
And of course, I’m a Net Control Station for
ECARS, as well as the Pennsylvania Central Area HF RACES net, the
EPAEPTN, and 3RN nets. I’m
member of the Eastern Area Traffic Net where I’m a liaison to the 3rd
Region and to the Central Area Net. I belong to the Radio Relay
International, functioning as a traffic relay. I am a Digital Traffic
Network Relay station and have been assigned as the liaison for PA and
the 3rd Region to the Eastern Area Digital Traffic Network,
relaying radiogram traffic to and from the Third Region net representing
PA, MD, DE and DC. I also belong to the Pennsylvania (CW)
Traffic Net.
I am a member of Skywarn, ARES, RACES, QCWA
(#36618), MUFON (#22102), Ten-Ten Int’l (#77169), FIST (#18048), SKCC
(#16716) and have completed Level 2 of the CW Operators Academy and am
enrolled to take the Level 3 course in January. Locally, I belong to the Endless Mountains Amateur
Radio Club and Skywarn.
I’m primarily interested in emergency services,
traffic handling, rag chewing, and net control operations. My most satisfying activity is being an ECARS NCS and meeting so
many great people on the air. I’m hoping to represent ECARS at Ham Fests
next summer as your Vice President.
Community Activities:
I’m an Electronics Technician, certified by the Electronic
Technicians of America and a retired US Air Force Master Sargeant (26
years service) were I served as a Ground Radio Communications
Supervisor and Crew Chief. I am very proud of my Air Force service
and achieving
Master Sargent. During that time I visited both poles during exploration assignments and sailed around
the world. As an Air Force retiree, I now take pride in continuing to serve
in other ways such as using my
radios for emergency services and traffic handling.
Mostly because of my background in
communications, I was an early convert to computers and built my first
Sinclair computer from a kit. In the very early days of the computer
industry, there was little commercial software so I wrote and distributed
many different types of programs for Ham Radio and computers in general.
I wrote the first computer programs for predicting weather from tables
of data entered for home computers. I taught myself machine
language programing for the 80xx, 68xxx and 65xx microchips and then wrote software for the Sinclair, Apple.
Commodore and IBM PC computers in machine language and using a
variety of advanced languages.
I switched career fields from electronics to
computers. I was
a Certified Network Engineer for Windows NT, a Certified Network
Administrator for Novell, and an instructor for Windows and Office
Products. For a while I was Technical Editor for Compute! Magazine. I
have written more than a dozen books on computer
programming and was employed in various positions in the computer
industry.
Personal Comments:
I would
be very honored to serve as your 2018 ECARS Vice
President.