After a lifetime of operating adventures and devotion to promoting amateur radio, Dennis Motschenbacher, K7BV, became a silent key on January 9, 2025, after a long battle with cancer. He was 76.
Those at DX Engineering remember him fondly as the Senior Executive Vice President of North American Sales for Yaesu, where he worked from 2006 until his retirement in 2019.
At the age of 13, Dennis was licensed as WV6WTD in Costa Mesa, California. He was immediately bit by the DXing and contesting bug, and, subsequently, “spent way too much time tuning the bands instead of doing homework,” he wrote on his blog.
Among his many amateur radio activities, K7BV was a lifetime member of the ARRL, president of the Texas DX Society, member of the Carolina DX Association, editor of the National Contest Journal, ARRL sales and marketing manager, and globetrotter whose travels took him from Yemen to Barbados, Madeira Island to Palau, St. Paul Island to Micronesia, and many locales in between.
He wrote on his QRZ page, “Licensed in 1962, my richest childhood dreams centered on visiting exotic places far away and running pileups for days. I spent hours and hours listening to Don, W9WNV; Gus, W4BPD; Martti, OH2BH, and many others work their piles, all the time dreaming of one day sounding like a smooth-running machine myself. I still carry that dream in my heart every day. Two tours of combat duty in Vietnam as a Radioman only served to fuel my desire to operate in faraway places.”
In 2000, K7BV represented the U.S. and the Society of Midwest Contesters as Ralph, K9ZO’s teammate at the World Radiosport Team Championships in Slovenia. Martti, OH2BH, and the 2002 WRTC Committee in Helsinki appointed him as that event’s ambassador-at-large. Once retired from DXpeditioning, he enjoyed chasing DX from his home in Turkey, North Carolina. His lifetime of DXing netted 331 entities confirmed in the DXCC Mixed category.
In the wonderful video below from 2015, Tim Duffy, K3LR, DX Engineering CEO, talks with K7BV during his visit to DX Engineering headquarters in Tallmadge, Ohio.
K7BV discusses his most interesting DXpedition (4W East Timor, 2000, with Dick Wolf, N6FF), his passion for 6 meters (“like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get”), and how being a cancer survivor changed his perspective on life.
He concluded his QRZ page by expressing his passion for amateur radio:
“There are many, many operators more talented than I will ever be…BUT few who love the hobby more than I do!”
Dennis Motschenbacher, K7BV
All of us at DX Engineering and OnAllBands express our most heartfelt sympathies to K7BV’s XYL Lieska, his family, friends, and all those he touched in the ham radio community.
73
