Biography

Hi, Name is Morten (Norwegian) but I go by Mort most of the time!

I am a retired school teacher/librarian and Information Specialist and Medical Librarian. I taught for 34 years in the public schools in Suffolk County on Long Island, NY. During those same 34 years I was a volunteer fireman, EMT and line officer.

My wife, Carol, is KG6YKI, and we live here in Etiwanda, CA which is in the eastern section of the City of Rancho Cucamonga, CA. We have two sons in their 40's and when they went out to this area of CA, we followed them after we retired. We have 5 grandchildren.

In May of 2002 I completed DXCC, sold all of my former equipment and came out to CA. At that time I set up a whole new station and over the past couple of years have updated my antennas and amplifiers.

Most of the time I operate on 20M phone, but am active on 10, 12, 17 and 20 meters. I have 6M capability, but don't operate there very much. For that I have a 5 element beam up at 45 feet. On 40/80 meters I operate with a 5 band longwire. I do some operating on 40 meters and rarely on 80.

DXing is a personal passion and a wonderful hobby, Typically I work among the various contests, but do not participate as a known contester. My goal is to build up my DXCC number of QSO's. I use Logic9 for my station logging and send weekly updates of my log up to E-QSL and LoTW.

My radio work also brings me into volunteering for communications work for the City of Rancho Cucamonga Fire Department as well as the San Bernardino County Emergency Communications group. This area of southern California has a very bad long-time history of major forest fires. The California terrain has thousands of deep canyons and high mountains where fire fighting ground equipment cannot go and therefore aviation plays a major part.

After a fire burns an area it doesn't take too many years when the vegetation grows back and more fires take over again. This area is subject of prevailing SW winds, but when the humidity is very low, they reverse and come off the Mojave Desert from the north east very frequently at 75 to 90 mph. The fires then become a blast furnace and when it approaches homes with its 2,500 degree temperature a house gets totally destroyed in about 3 minutes!!

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

My radio is an IC-756 Pro2
Heil Goldline mike
Alpha 8410 amplifier
38' Hy-Gain tower
TH11DX 5 band beam up at 40' elevation
I also have a 40/80 meter longwire antenna and a 5 element beam for 6 meters

Most of my operation is on 20 meters, but I also like to drop down to 10, 12, 15 and 17 meters when the propagation is good.

All of my work is on SSB phone

My QRZ photo needs to be updated so that it shows my recently purchased Alpha 8410.