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.
“Did you know Karl, K5DI?”
I just saw the friend I previously mentioned and asked him if he knew either of the people you mentioned, and a big smile came across his face when I mentioned Karl, K5DI. So though I’m not sure if I’m familiar with Karl, my friend certainly is. There’s that saying about some number of degrees of knowing people, and I guess we’re fairly close in there! I didn’t finally move to New Mexico until ‘90 or ‘91, so our timeframes are just a bit different. It’s still a fairly small, tight knit type community in these parts, but it certainly has grown, especially the whole Cruces and El Paso area.