Avid radio amateur, Marty Engstrom, N1ARY, of Fryeburg, Maine, has become a Silent Key. He died on January 4, 2024. Generations of New England television viewers may know him as Marty on the Mountain from his weather reports on camera for WMTW-TV from the station’s transmitter site on Mount Washington in Gorham, New Hampshire.

Engstrom was known to quip that he was not intentionally in the weather business: “I’m a TV engineer, not a meteorologist!,” he would say. Engstrom served the viewers of New England for 38 years. He began at the station in the mid-1960s, after a career in the United States Air Force, according to a memorial on the WMTW website. He retired in 2002.

In 2003, Engstrom released his autobiography, Marty on the Mountain: 38 Years on Mt. Washington, in which he discussed his passion for amateur radio.

As a well-known radio amateur in his area and beyond, Engstrom’s voice was easily recognizable. According to Bill Mann, W1KX, “You could recognize his heavy Maine accent before he even identified.”

According to those who knew him, Engstrom frequently served his community through amateur radio. After a major ice storm in 1998, hams in Oxford County, Maine, banded together to form an emergency communications group. “Marty's low-key approach to various situations, even the more stressful ones, helped the group stay focused. His wealth of knowledge of transmitters and antennas certainly was a tremendous benefit to the less experienced hams,” said Wayne Strout, N1YIS. “Marty actively worked as a member of our group with drills and training for both CERT and ARES.”

Engstrom served for some time as the Treasurer of the Yankee Amateur Radio Club and had been a longtime ARRL member at the time of his passing. He was 86 years old.