About Martin Held

M.S. Electrical Engineering, Oregon State University, 2005
B.S. Electrical Engineering, Oregon State University, 2002
B.S. Physics, Oregon State University, 2002

DX, SOTA-wannabe, and Homebrew radios are my main hobbies. Current rig is a KX3 usually at 5-10W, maybe a 50W amplifier, or an SB200. Now also proud owner of a TS590S that I got on the cheap and reasonable

I have home brewed some of my own gear, the one most recently released is the 50W amplifier. See my website (ae7eu.com) for more details and all the files for it. Other stuff I dabble in include MCU projects, retrocomputing with my Kaypro II/84, and random amplifier design. I also volunteer with the forest service as a back country wilderness ranger.

I am a supporter of Open Source solutions, though I am also familiar with a significant suite of proprietary windows-based software from previous work (Altium, Allegro, Ansoft tools, etc). I use only OSS tools for my trade unless absolutely required to use something else. I own only one legal copy of windows, and rarely use it except for ham radio (n1mm), as the EDA tools I use are *nix based, have been ported to Linux (e.g. Xilinx ISE/Quartus/Libero/Code Composer Studio), or can be run under wine. Common software includes GNU Octave, kicad, gEDA/PCB, iverilog/ghdl, OpenOffice, and GIMP. Wine-supported software includes LTSpice, and AADE Filter Design.

Professionally I am an electrical engineer with many years of R&D experience, ASIC design, reliability modeling, programming and PCB design. I am currently a senior engineer for a teeny tiny company where we make things like ISM-band RF power modules, linear mosfets for MRI's, and other discrete devices as a part of a larger teeny tiny company that makes just about every semiconductor known. Previously I was a self employed contractor, doing all the above, and before that doing much of the above at a solar start up. My first foray into the industry was with Tektronix doing broadband (DC->40Ghz) ASIC design, as well as some mixed signal/verilog/VHDL stuff.

I have been involved with electronics since I was 6, and have gotten involved in Ham radio to have some additional fun with System/PCB design. I studied for a few weeks in 2009 and took all 3 tests at once to get it out of the way.

I currently attend as a member of the Central Oregon DX club. Seen here with W7YOW at the Timber Mountain Lookout tower, Modoc County, California during the 6th area QSO party as a team member of N6M. Also a member of the High Desert Amateur Radio Group, and QRP ARCI #15917.

I also enjoy operating portable. For the last few years a favorite haunt of mine has been an area I found off the Lake-Kalamath border for 7QP. The noise levels there are spectacularly low, and with a simple dipole and 100W I can pretty much work all around the world. More power wouldn't hurt though! For 2014, had a 40m dipole with a 20m inline 'fan' to cover 40/20/15, a switch to turn the dipole into a verticle for 80m, and a homemade 10m moxon that performed beutifully. 2020 will be 500W output from a KPA500 into an 80/40 dipole, and a 20m rope hoisted moxon.