Dennis Kidder – W6DQ

Dennis Kidder – W6DQ

Dennis Kidder

San Bernardino Microwave Society

Not Your Grandpa’s Ham Radio: Bringing ham radio to a new community

For the past six years a group of hams from three special interest radio clubs have been presenting amateur radio to the “maker community” at Maker Faires throughout California.  The maker community represents an untapped resource of technically-minded people who know little or nothing about the “techie” side of ham radio.  We demonstrate and educate some newer ham tech with the goal of recruiting makers to our ranks.

Dennis was first licensed as WN6NIA in 1969 and was granted W6DQ, the callsign of one of his Elmers, a little over ten years back.  He is a retired system engineer out of the aerospace industry, having worked on everything from satellites to airport telecommunications systems, military air traffic control to battlefield comms.  His interests in ham radio range from weak signal V/UHF/microwave to boatanchor collecting and restoration.