Tribute to Al Hix W8AH -page 2-

Tribute to Albert H. Hix W8AH
1917 - June 25, 2003

page 2

W8AH on the phone in his shack. There are TV's in the background. They were part of his SSTV station.

The center of the photo shows Al's Satelite Station. It includes from the top a 4-1000 10M homebrew amp (powersupply is in the bottom of the rack below table level), next is his UHF/VHF Sat area. It was a Yaesu 736 with 432 and 144 brick amps, a homebrew sequencer for his amps and rx preamps. I believe one of the rigs is also a Kenwood 700 (he had 2 of them) There was also an Icom 2AT HT in there... I don't think I EVER heard Al on 2M FM Hi Hi.

Photo of some of Al's homebrew amplifiers. He built his own amps for each band. These were all 4-1000 amps. Al had a large number (more than 6) HB tuners also scattered about that stack. We found one amp that was for 10/15/20 and separate amps for 40 and 80M. The largest amp had three 4-1000 tubes in it. The HB power supply cabinet was on wheels and took 3 of us to move it (no joke). ALL of his antennas were fed with RG-17 or larger hardline. At some point, Al took all of his rack mount amps out of service and replaced them with the commercial amps like Alpha 77, 87As, etc.

Al's QSL from his 1968 ON8VO Belgium operation

Al also operated from Luxembourg in 1968
ON8VO/LX, W8BT/LX

Al's QSL from his St. pierre et Miquelon operation, FP0GBG

PP1ZAH 1989 Brazil
W8AH had the first PP1 license issued to a foreign operator as
"A Partners of the Americas Project"

Al was issued WV8ITU for "ITU Week"

Al's W200AH 1988 West Virginia 125 years Bicentennial Celebration QSL
West Virginia became a state June 20, 1863.

I truly believe that Al Hix W8AH tried and mastered ALL phases of Ham Radio. Not just DX. This, to me, makes all of his DX accomplishments even more amazing.

One last note: AL was a packrat.... I hauled 10,200 pounds of "junk" that
did not sell from his basement to the dump. We have receipts to prove it!
(this was after all of the local packrats went thru it)

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All photos and QSL cards on this page are courtesy of Hal W8HC
Info courtesy of Mac W8XF