Chip Margelli, K7JA, has been licensed since 1963, and an Extra Class licensee since 1968. Chip and his wife Janet, KL7MF live in Garden Grove, California. Chip is a Life Member of ARRL, AMSAT, and Quarter Century Wireless Association, and he works for Ham Radio Outlet as an I.T. Specialist.
For over fifty years, Chip has been active in DXing and, especially, international radiosport competition and goodwill activities. Among his accomplishments are twelve First-Place finishes nationally in the ARRL November Sweepstakes, and a number of world-high or national wins in the CQ World-Wide DX Contest, ARRL DX Contest, and CQ WPX Contest. Chip's DXpedition activities include operations from St. Lucia, Dominica, Antigua, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Saipan, Micronesia, Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Martinique, Cuba, and Barbados.
In 1984, Chip and Janet were invited by the Chinese Radio Sport Association to travel to Beijing for operation from BY1PK and help train the new Chinese operators during the early phases of the rebirth of Amateur Radio in China.
In 1989, Chip was honored by being selected to be the American representative in the first-ever Finnish-Soviet-American DXpedition to Malyj-Vysotskij Island as 4J1FS. The following year, Chip and his teammate Mike Wetzel, W9RE, won a Silver Medal at the World Radiosport Team Championship, held in conjunction with the Goodwill Games in Seattle.
And in the Fall of 1991, Chip was a member of the Instructor/Operator team in the IARU Albania Project (ZA1A), led by Martti Laine, OH2BH, which brought about the rebirth of Amateur Radio in Albania after many decades of radio silence.
In May of 2005, Chip and partner Ken Miller, K6CTW, made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC, utilizing “ancient” Morse Code to compete with (and defeat) the U.S. champion cell-phone text messenger in a message-completion speed contest. Chip is a 2018 inductee into the First Class CW Operators’ Club (FOC).
Articles by Chip have been published in QST, CQ VHF, Popular Communications, CQ, and FOCUS magazines, and in several books. Outside of Amateur Radio, Chip enjoys photography, astronomy, and is a marathon runner.
In May of 2008, Chip was inducted into CQ Magazine’s Amateur Radio Hall of Fame.