Biography

I am a General Class licensee. Working on my Extra Class.

QTH: Mars, PA (yes, Mars) about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh, PA USA. And yes, we have a spaceship!!

Masters Degree in Engineering and a background in technology. Did work on radar systems and high-tech electronic systems in industry back in the '80s and '90s. Been tinkering in radio since 1975...still learning!

I am active on several local weekly 2m nets in PA, OH and WV, including the Scanner Net on Sundays on 146.730 MHz (PL 94.8) at 8PM Eastern.

I am a trained SKYWARN weather spotter (NWS-Pittsburgh) and do participate in Butler County and Allegheny County SKYWARN weather nets as they occur.

I am experimenting with FELD-HELL mode (Hellschreiber) using FLDigi. A very old "fuzzy digital" mode that creates 14 x 7 pixel characters in a ticker-tape format. Dates back to 1929. Typically CQing on 14063 or 28063.

I am now using Linux Mint (Cinnamon) for my ham laptop. I successfully installed Andy's Ham Radio Linux suite for access to many ham-related tools - including CHIRP, WSJT-X, FLDigi, xnec2c, HamClock and many more. Pretty steep learning curve to switch from Windows to Linux.

Member: North Hills Amateur Radio Club (NHARC) - https://nharc.org/

Member: Butler County Amateur Radio Association (BCARA) - http://w3udx.org/

Member: Feld Hell Club

Member: ARRL

Equipment

Station Equipment:

Yaesu FT-991A HF/VHF/UHF 100W all-mode transceiver
MAT-TUNER mAT-Y200 automatic antenna tuner
Diamond X200 base antenna for 2m/70cm VHF/UHF - up about 30 feet
Homebrew 7-band 80m EFHW wire antenna for HF
Homebrew 5-band 40m EFHW wire antenna for HF
Heil Pro 7 headset and foot switch
Baofeng 5RM tri-band HTs