WD7I - Harvey Imhoff

Sun Lakes, AZ

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  [[ Sadly, Harvey became a silent key on October 16, 2009 ]]
       
Bedtime stories at WD7I....  Harvey with grandson and interesting reading.


In his amateur radio career, Harvey earned WAS #34,229, DXCC #15,135, AMI #256, TEN-TEN # 24469, was an R.C.C. Member and a LIFETIME MEMBER of THE TUCSON REPEATER ASSOCIATION, INC.

He was first licensed as a novice as WB7VON in 1978. He kept that call when he upgraded to General Class on 1-17-1979 and then to Advanced Class on 1-19-1999. When he upgraded to Extra Class on 8-8-2000, he became WD7I.

Harvey was born in St. Paul Minnesota. He joined the USMC at the age  of just 17 and was off to warm weather in southern California at MCRD then to Camp Pendleton. The Marines provided him with visits to such great DX locations as Okinawa, Japan, the Philippines, Formosa, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Panama and Cuba. Cuba was a birthday present for a front row seat to the missile crisis and more as he was then a recon Marine. It was OCT 22 1962.

When he left the service in 1964 his family had moved to Tempe AZ.  He was there until 1973, then back to St. Paul for a year, then back to Chandler AZ, for an extended visit with his parents.  He moved to Tucson in 1974 and accepted a civil service position at DAVIS-MONTHAN Air Force Base. This is where he was first licensed. He stayed there until a work assignment in 1991 required him to move to Colorado Springs in 1991.  He spent 3 years there and decided it was time to warm up again.  He asked his employer (the US Dept of Defense) to move him back to the  Phoenix area where he could work as a fire captain. He got the new job  but ended up going back to work in California, commuting with 3 days on  and 4 days off. Flying Southwest Airlines was cheap. He would leave a vehicle in Ontario CA for use there. But he was very happy to retire from the fire department in 2003, after commuting for over 4 years. Then, as he said, it was off to Disneyland. He lived in his Sun Lakes house for 14 years with his wife of 34 years, enjoying amateur radio, camping and travelling the Southwest.  He was a fixture on the HF bands both from his house with its 100-foot Eucalyptus-tree 'stealth' antennas and the mobile with a Webster Band Spanner antenna he converted to motor-tuning.

Harvey's last years were filled with a battle against the highly malignant skin cancer melanoma, contracted, Harvey believed, by his exposure to sunlight as part of his job as a supervising fire fighter.  In spite of this struggle, he was active and optimistic until a week before his death.  The Arizona amateur community will miss him and his "old buzzard" transmissions.



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