Friday, January 13, 2017

Loss of a VHF Propagation Pioneer/Reseacher - Pat Dyer WA5IYX

Good morning.
One of the sad things about our hobby is that we losing many of the pioneers and researchers that have made this hobby so fascinating.


I learned this morning that P.J. (Pat) Dyer, WA5IYX passed away in December 2016.
From my personal observations, Pat had dedicated his entire life to the research of VHF Propagation, especially Sporadic Es. To the best of my knowledge, he was contributing up to the last minutes of his life.

Pat's family appeared to be only VHF/UHF propagation research. His family in VHF/UHF/WeakSignal are going to miss him for a long time.

Pat should be considered the Father of Sporadic Es. He was very instrumental in identifying the "Diurnal" patterns with this propagation phenomena.
Most of my first draft Papers and Blog postings concerning multi-year observations and analyses were sent to Pat for his comment and feedback.

If anyone wants to understand Es more, you have to visit his website. He maintained some absolute meticulous records. I wish I had done the same, but getting married twice and four re-locations resulted in a loss of most of my records.
I am going to get hold of some of the VHF groups around here and see if we can't honor him by giving his last name to a VHF propagation phenomena.
RIP Pat.
73 Art Jackson KA5DWI/7 Near Prescott Arizona  

1 comment:

  1. Well said. Pat was there when I was just getting started in this hobby and although other dxers mocked me for not knowing what skip was, he helped explain it and I will miss asking him questions regarding the hobby during the summers. I didn't know him but I thought about him every time I got skip to Texas. This is definitely a significant blow to the field. I hope he knows how much we will miss him.

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