Biography

Continuously licensed since 1963; my first callsigns were wb6fyx / wn6fyx
While stationed at U.S. Navy Comm station in Okinawa I operated as KR6PT, 1968-1969. I worked with Navy Marine Corps Mars network in RVN 1971-72 while stationed in Cam Ranh Bay. Licensed with the non-vanity call I now hold, AC6P in 1979.

I have been active on satellite communications since 2002. My entire satellite station is homebrew except the VHF-UHF radio (IC-910H and IC-821H) and rotor hardware. I also enjoy digital modes on HF, particularly JT-65 and Olivia.

Equipment

HF station:
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Yaesu FT-920 and Yaesu FT-2000
Homebrew 3-channel audio mixer accepting two separate radios to feed my station computer's sound card and operate full-duplex on AO-7 (2m up, 10m down).

Antennas
Not worth talking about.

Satellite station:
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IC-821H / IC-910H
Homebrew ICOM CIV radio control through a CP2103 custom FDDIO/USB interface I designed.

I designed and built both of my VU / UV antennas:
14 element CP switchable 2m yagi.
12 turn RHCP 70cm helix (soon to be upgraded to CP switchable helix).

AZ/EL rotor system:
G5500 rotor with custom designed ATMEGA8 cpu controller and FDDIO/USB.

Software:
SatStation v5.3. I began writing this program right after I first got on satellites in 2002. I started with NOVA and eventually migrated all features to my own custom software in 2005. In particular, it features unique fully interrupt driven background tuning for either the IC-821 or IC-910 with all the maps and views that NOVA has.