AA5VU - Richard Kriss - Austin - USA

[4L5A]

Richard M Kriss, AA5VU from Austin, USA passed away.
Information from WM5R:
It is with sadness that we learned yesterday afternoon about the passing of Dick Kriss AA5VU. Dick was a long-time active member of the Central Texas DX & Contest Club (CTDXCC). Primarily a DXer, Dick was active in RTTY contesting and was our local expert for anything related to digital on MacOS.
Yesterday, Dick was performing some routine maintenance on his home tower when he lost consciousness. EMS were able to lower him to the ground, but were unable to resuscitate him.
RIP OM.
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R

[4L5A]

Thanks Ken for the news about Dick, AA5VU, as sad as it is.

When I saw the announcement from Ken about Dick's passing, the first thing that came to mind was the first time I worked Dick. It was in a contest and thought I had copied Dick's call wrong and sent the exchange using "AA5AU". Dick came back to me and said his call is "AA5VU AA5Very Ugly".
At this point I figured it would be more fun to chat with this AA5VU rather than keep up the exchange rate, so sent back to him, "sorry thought you were a friend of mine AA5AU AA5Awful Ugly". Dick's response was that he had worked AA5AU earlier and had a few others who came back with AA5AU instead of AA5VU.

As would have it, as soon as Dick and I finished the exchange, Don, AA5AU, jumped in letting us know that he had listening to our exchange and commented on the phonetics I had used for his call.

That first exchange with Dick and all that surrounded it seared into my mind a bit of a deeper friendship than just a casual contest contact. From then on whenever I would work Dick in a contest, I always thought of our first QSO.
I think Dick had the same feeling as we usually took a little extra time to send a "73" or "gl" as part of our contest exchange.

Thanks for all the QSOs, Dick, rest in peace my friend.

73,
Mike, K4GMH