“Lots of my ham op friends worked at the labs & military bases. Good bunch of guys.”
We may have a mutual friend, Doug R. He worked at White Sands, has lived in both Cruces and Silver, and is still a ham, in more ways than one.
I was in NM from 1972-1986. Got my first ham ticket in 1976. Had lots of friends in Las Cruces. Lived there for 9 months after I moved to NM. Wife did not like living in Las Cruces. We moved to Silver City. She loved it there. As a consequence of moving to Silver City I spent Wednesday night in Las Cruces every week. Lots of friends from the Mesilla Valley Club. I was in Navy/Marine MARS for 19 years. Lots of good friend from that in NM. Knew some really good techs, engineers, and physicists from there. Great Ham community. Did you know Karl, K5DI? He was an engineer at WSMR. I miss that Ham community there were some really great community projects that were years ahead of their time.
When I was living in Silver City Lou McCoy (W1ICP) retired & moved there. Think he had family there. He was technical editor for QST (for many many years) and later wrote for (I think) Ham Radio.
I did some building for him. He lost vision in one eye in a firearm mishap. At the time I had a reputation for good detail work with a solder iron.