Biography

Many, many years ago a senior HAM thrilled a young teenager when he fired up his relay rack linear and all the lights in his basement dimmed. After that, I learned Morse code and passed the Technician exam. In my 30's I did something more valuable than any job at the time. I passed my General Class exam and have been using it for the rest of my life. We moved from Cape Coral, Florida to Lake Placid, Florida where I spend a lot of my time running FT-8, SSTV, and SSB.

Equipment

Now running a Yaesu FT-991A transceiver into an Ameritron AL-572 linear amp can can push 1,300 watts although 700 is as high as I go. The antenna is a Sentinel Hex Beam that's (only) 23' off the ground behind the house, in front of trees (worst possible location, but this morning I connected with South Africa, over 8,000 miles away. Most of the time I'm on 20 Meters. And, 2 meters.