Past ARRL Southeastern Division Director Harmon “Dale” Strieter, W4QM (ex-W4DQS), of Cocoa Beach, died on January 6. An ARRL Life Member, he was 92 and a founding member of the Maxim Society.
Strieter was ARRL Southeastern Division Director from 1970 until 1973.
During World War II, he served as US Maritime Service radio officer in the Pacific. After the war, he received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Michigan State. He got his amateur radio license in 1947. Strieter later earned an MSEE from Michigan State, and then worked as an audio engineer.
In 1958, Strieter moved to Cocoa Beach to work for General Electric, a NASA contractor, and he served as the guidance engineer on the Mercury and Gemini manned spaceflight missions.
Strieter was a prolific DXpeditioner. After 20 years with GE, he returned to sea in 1979 as a radio officer in the US Merchant Marine on a ship generally anchored at Chagos. As VQ9QM, Strieter logged more than 200,000 contacts from nearby Diego Garcia, between 1986 and 2001. He retired in 2002. — Thanks to Tom Tenney, W8OJM, and Don Karvonen, K8MFO
