Biography

Greetings from the redneck river rat town of Havana Illinois (Mason County). Al Capone's favorite duck hunting location and home of the Havana Ducks which local legend says he coined for our sports mascot's name. Located in the West central part of the state, 50 miles South of Peoria, 50 miles North of Springfield, on the scenic Illinois River, EN40xg grid.

I am an Extra class and have had a license since 1989. I use a Flex 6600M. The amp is an Acom 1500 for added power when needed. Back up radio is my Icom 7300 (camping / portable) I also have an Icom 7100 for mobile use. For VHF/UHF I have an Icom 9700 also a pair of transverters connected to the Flex 6600M. My back up amp is a Heathkit SB-200 (eBay special). Antennas are a 3 element Steppir with the 40 meter add on loop up about 35 feet. I have a hazer on the tower so I can lower it to work on it if needed. I put up a DXengineering 43 foot vertical but rebuilt it for 40 meters it has a MFJ-998RT 1.5 KW Remote tuner connected to it at the feed point to allow me to use it on other bands. I also have installed slightly in the ground a couple of inches deep, 40 60 foot radials. Sandy soil here doesn't work well with a vertical hence the need for buried radials but we grow the best sweet corn and watermelons in central Illinois, so radials are a must for the antenna. I also built a new 160/80 fan style dipole for low bands and it will tune other bands using a second MFJ-998RT tuner at the base of the vertical coax run up to the feed point. I have a MFJ-989D tuner for back up. I enjoy SSB, FT8, FT4, RTTY, PSK31, JT65hf, and JT9 modes via Mix W and other software. For satellite I use the 9700 with a M2 seven element 2 meter and a M2 11 element 70cm both horizontal mounted(it works fine for me). Yaesu G5500 rotor for movement. I control both the radio and rotor with a CSN technologies S.A.T. controller that works most excellently. I have a horizontal Cushcraft 13 element boomer at the top of the tower antenna stack for 2 meter FT8 and SSB. I really enjoy when 6 meters is open. My log is the N3FJP Amateur contact log. I'm not really a chit-chatter, I like to make a contact and move on to the next one. I love DXCC country hunting and worked all states several times hunting on all the bands and different modes.

I prefer qsling via LOTW and WWW.eQSL.CC, Those I use 100% and I upload after I am done on the radio for the day sometimes right after the contact. I also upload to Clublog too. I don't do cards or bureaus anymore, too much of a hassle. I also do not confirm any SWL listeners, sorry it messes with how my logs work. I can see no good reason for someone not to confirm 2 way contacts on the online sites. It's easy to do, saves postage, saves paper, and saves time. If you have no intention of confirming then why are you wasting everybody's time and effort making contacts that won't be confirmed? I refuse to pay for a confirmation from a DX station trying to make a profit from being in a rare location.

I am on Facebook as (WWW.facebook.com/Thomas.P.Moore). When I am not on the air I'll be working in the yard, in the work shed building stuff, or working on the house.

As far as work goes I am a retired (Novemeber 2015) corrections officer with the State of Illinois with 25 years completed. I worked at Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton Illinois. I spent my first 5 years as an officer at Menard Psychiatric Correctional Center in Chester Illinois. One thing about it was, you never knew what the day is going to bring you behind the wall. I am also a Navy veteran serving as a Sonar Tech homeported in Yokosuka Japan in the early 1980's aboard the historic USS Kirk FF-1087 (Look her up and see what she did during the evacuation of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war eight years before I got to call her home.) and then the USS Oldendorf DD-972 also at Yokosuka but now she's an artifical reef off the northern west coast.

I have a SKCC number of 11161. I cannot for the life of me figure out how people hear whole words at a time on CW. My mind is not wired to do that I guess.

Worked DXCCs: