Ed Galipeau WA1LRL - Silent Key

With great sadness I have to report that Ed Galipeau WA1LRL passed away last night.
Ed had been battling Amaloydosis. Last I spoke with Ed he was down to only 115 pounds and was very weak and joked about how a light breeze could blow him over. His spirits were still good, but Ed knew this disease did not have a good prognosis. He was being treated by the Mayo clinic in Boston where they have experience with this disease. Sadly, unless caught very early and treated very agressively, few survive it :(
Peggy and I lost a close relative to this disease a little over a year ago. I really didn´t expect Ed to pass this quickly.
Ed had been a very active member in the Packet community from way back in the 1980´s. Ed worked with Hank, W0RLI in Boston in the early development of the W0RLI BBS software. Ed later moved to Brighton Michigan where he quickly became active, setting up a Packet BBS system and working with others to do the same. Ed was instrumental in dividing the state into the four quadrants (#SEMI, #SWMI, #NEMI, #NWMI) for more organized distribution of heirarchical BBS mail.
Ed was one of the early adopters of NOS and TCP/IP and helped in IP address space planning. He was also involved in setting up ROSE/FPAC nodes and linking Michigan with the European continent.
Most recently Ed was instrumental as a member of the WinLink development team where he ran our Michigan PMBO and worked on the software used in the CMS nodes deployed all around the world. Ed ran the Detroit CMS. He was also responsible for the automated monitoring we see on the Winlink webpages, showing the up-to-the-minute status of that network.
Ed served as the DEC in charge of Amateur activities at the NWSDTX
(K8DTX) White Lake NWS weather service and was responsible for many functions there such as assuring that an operator would always be present during any Skywarn event involving the 17 counties served by that weather station. Many of us would hear Ed´s voice on the MICON repeater network during bad weather events.
Ed was the System Operator (SysOp) of the Hamgate.LivCo.AMPR.org JNOS Hamgate node at his home in Fenton, providing TCP/IP routing for Livingston, Genessee, and Oakland counties. He was an active member of the DRG, helping to set standards and work through issues in the formative days of that organization.
Ed will be missed....

--- Jay Nugent WB8TKL
Chair, ARRL Michigan Section "Digital Radio Group" (DRG)
[www.MI-DRG.org]