Biography

Licensed in 1989 as a novice class, 3 months later I had my Extra ticket. That year I entered a contest on 10 meters, Worked All El Paso, WAE, in El Paso, Texas. I received 1st place and a trophy for 10 meters that weekend. I think I had 682 contacts on 10, many years ago so I dont remember exactly but it was around that number of QSO's. I did that with a homebrow 2 element Cubical Quad for 10 meters. The rig at that time was a Kenwood TS-520. Spent time overseas with a reciprocal callsign in Germany as I was still in the service. The call was DA1AS. Worked almost exclusively CW as phone caused a lot of interference to the locals and their tv antennas as there was no cable tv in the area. I did work a little phone at reduced power in the wee hours of the morning although I was up at about 0400 anyway getting ready for the day. That give me a chance to increase my speed, I was at around 50 wpm back then. I think it would take me some time to get back to that copy/speed, LOL. Lived there in El Paso for many years but my career brought me to the East coast and my final QTH for retirement. I still have a few years to go but getting close! I do live on a mountain now here in PA. Finally, enough space for an antenna farm! By the way, I now have a small hobby farm also, I have a flock of about 40 chickens, and 50 ducks! So, fresh eggs and gardening are some of the xyl and my other hobbies. We do a lot of canning and have a dedicated canning room. I have a homestead for self-sufficiency as well as a communications location. I talked the XYL into a generator at some point when I can afford it, so if the power goes out there will be light, as well as my station, LOL! I love to homebrew and study different antenna configurations. I had been off the air for many years due to work, etc. keeping me way to busy. My forte is Systems Administration/datacenter and now Cybersecurity. This past Christmas I was Santa to myself and bought an ICOM IC-7300. Great radio, I am very impressed. I have heard it many times already, but ICOM hit this one out of the park! I am very impressed with the performance and sensitivity of this rig. I had always owned older tube rigs and hybrids so its nice to get something more modern. I complement that Icom with a 160-6 meter Doublet with 600 ohm ladderline at approximately 90 feet. I feed the ladder line into the shack via a 1:1 isolation choke balun by Balun Designs into a balanced tuner, the MFJ-974HB. I only run 100 watts, and even less at times but at some point I will invest in a linear amplifier but at this time I just have to wait for one. I am going to start saving for it though but I can wait for it. Very quiet QTH here with minimal noise and electrical interference, etc. Most times it doesnt require much power to work around the world. I think that for me is the fun factor, lower the power and take advantage of propagation, long path and grey line. Although having a linear amplifier would be nice to have it is not a necessity except when the low bands get so noisy. I plan on buying a Wellbrook ALA1530LN magnetic loop antenna for receive. https://www.loop-antennas.com/wellbrook/ALA1530LN I plan on adding the mod INRAD RX7300 RX receive-only antenna jack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBajms1EnuA and using the Wellbrook on a rotor for ferreting those weak signals! Other than that I enjoy casual ragchew, nets/roundtable, that is really what I enjoy about ham radio and experimenting and building antenna's etc. I also plan on VHF/UHF operation a little later on once the HF station is squared away. 73 for now. Dan AB5VJ