Welcome!

Welcome to the website of amateur radio operator W7WIL. I also have a presence on most of the ham radio websites, but I probably use QRZ the most, as I imagine most hams do. It's like the Facebook of ham radio. If you would like to check out my QRZ page, it can be found at: https://www.qrz.com/db/W7WIL.

The date and time here is October 16, 2025, 1:39 am (zulu is 8:39 am)

Pleasure to make your virtual acquaintance! My name is Steven and I am an amateur radio operator currently living in southern Arizona, outside of Sierra Vista, Arizona. Originally from eastern Kentucky (a small town called Paintsville), I am required by virtue of being a native Kentuckian to being a fan of the University of Kentucky Wildcats. If you work me on phone, it is entirely possible that I will say "Go Big Blue" if you identify yourself with a QTH in Kentucky. It's almost instinctive.

First licensed in July of 2020, I have only been a ham for a couple of years at this point. From what I understand, most hams find that they really enjoy a specific aspect of ham radio more than others, and I haven't yet gotten myself into that point yet. I got my extra because I wanted to never have to take another license exam again and so that I could play on the extra bands if I felt like it, but I don't think I have but one or two QSOs in the extra part of the band. I sometimes stumble upon a QSO in those areas but I don't really want to interrupt the contact. I really do like FT8 and FT4, primarily because I can make all sorts of QSOs I wouldn't otherwise be able to make. However, I do find there to be some fun in operating on SSB phone, especially if I can find something to talk about.

I serve as the secretary for our local radio club, the Cochise Amateur Radio Association (K7RDG), and it's a rewarding experience. I don't get to play radio as much as I would like, as sometimes family and boring topics (like work) get in the way. Part of the problem is that I really don't have a ham shack yet, but rather a radio occupying some space in the master bedroom; it's obviously not an ideal situation for trying to make contacts late into the evening or in the early morning hours. My lovely wife just can't seem to sleep through me saying "CQ CQ CQ" over and over again — go figure...

A photo of my wonderful wife and I all gussied up at the 2023 MI Ball.
Photo credit: ©Reign PhotographyI served in the United States Army for nearly nine years, before being medically retired as a 33W, which is now a 35T. I thought I'd miss the Army so much that I decided to go to work for them as a civilian, so now I teach new soldiers how to maintain and repair equipment. Please don't read this as "thank me for my service," but having spent the majority of my life now working for the Army in one way or another, it is a large part of who I am. A little more background, I have an associate's of applied science from Cochise College in electronics technology, a bachelor's of applied science from Wayland Baptist University in computer information systems, and a master's of business administration with a specialization in management of information systems, also from Wayland. If you're wondering why I don't have a doctorate, all I can say is that I don't have that kind of cash (and I really don't want to take on any student debt). If you know of a way I can get my doctorate for free while still working full time, I'm all ears. 😉

Should you like to e-mail me directly, you can send mail to the address w7wil@w7wil.radio. Though the link should work perfectly, I have a bit of an obfiscation method going on so just make sure the mail program that opens is sending to the address you see here. For those crawlers that go around looking for e-mail addresses to add to the millions of mailing lists that are out there, if they scan the content of this page, they'll end up scraping the e-mail [email protected], which happens to be the FTC's spam inbox; it saves me the trouble of forwarding the spam.

Here are the last 15 entries of my QRZ logbook. If you recently made contact with me but it's not on here, it is possible I haven't recently uploaded my logbook to QRZ. If you don't have a QRZ logbook, you should get one. They're pretty handy and I think it's worthwhile. You can get one (they're free) at http://www.qrz.com/