bill mcguire n7msi
Always a maker of things that work, Bill put together a practice CW oscillator when he was just eight years old. He and his dad, who is still a tinkerer, built a TV in those early years. Bill’s father was interested in ham radio, so that was in the background when Bill took electronics in high school and then joined the Navy in 1977. For four years he served in aviation electronics as a flight engineer on a trainer aircraft, a Grumman G-1 TC-4C out of Whidbey Island, WA. After his discharge from the Navy he returned home to Missoula and majored in interpersonal communications at the University of Montana. During that time he joined the Army Reserves as an electrician in an engineer unit. In 1986 a civilian position became open that was only open to Army Reservists.
Bill’s training in interpersonal communications was useful in every venue in which he served, but especially when he was the NCO Academy Senior Instructor in South Dakota, and later in Montana for eight years. It was similar to being principal of a school, as he supervised and helped instructors. In 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Bill’s reserve unit, the 159th Combat Support Group, was mobilized for Desert Storm in Iraq. He was a communications shift supervisor, working from a communications van that supported teletype, radio, and switchboards near the Iraqi border and ultimately into Iraq during the liberation of Kuwait. After Desert Storm, Bill continued serving in the Army Reserve and worked his Department of Defense civilian job, played with ham radio, bought a house, and began fixing it up. In 2004 he started dating Jeanine. Then suddenly he received orders: report to Belton, Missouri. He discovered that his teletype experience of the 1980s had morphed into an IT MOS, military occupational skill. Soon he was back in Kuwait and ultimately sent to Mosul, Iraq, in charge of maintaining computers, running a satellite network, and setting up a UHF/VHF intranet. In spite of hellish heat and enemy action, he completed nearly impossible missions, servicing five locations, and bringing a shipment of 150 computers from Baghdad to Mosul. After a year and a half he was back from Iraqi Freedom, home for good, and married Jeanine in 2006. For 35 years Bill had two careers, one in the Army Reserve and one with the Department of Defense in communications/electronics and small arms repair. Bill retired in March 2018. Over the years his military training and his amateur radio hobby (he got his first license in 1987) had complemented each other. Now he pursues his love of building things electronic and enters a few amateur radio contests. He is an avid participant in SOTA, Summits on the Air, transmitting from mountain tops or “chasing” others. Still a teacher at heart, he enjoys mentoring new hams. June 2018 |
SOTA activation by Bill N7MSI and Rob AE7AP on New Year's Eve at midnight UTC, earning points for 2017 and 2018. They were on summit 5940, on the Mt. Helena ridge line. Photo by Bill N7MSI.
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Bill and Jeanine with his six-antenna tower: 2 meter/70cm dual-band beam, 6-meter beam, 10-40 meter rotatable dipole, G5RV, random wire, and a 2 meter J-pole.
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Bill activating SOTA summit Scratch Gravel Hill. Photo by Jeanine McGuire.
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