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home QRZCQ - The database for radio hams 
 
2024-03-29 11:32:34 UTC
 

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N6AIR

Active QRZCQ.com user

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Robert Wright

San Jose 95112
United States, CA

NA
united states

Call data

Last update:2017-11-21 18:23:39
Continent:NA
Views:72
Main prefix:K
Class:General
Federal state:CA
Latitude:37.3471160
Longitude:-121.8793100
Locator:CM97BI
DXCC Zone:291
ITU Zone:8
CQ Zone:5
ULS record:711595

QSL data

eQSL QSL:no
Bureau QSL:no
Direct QSL:no
LoTW QSL:no

Biography

I've been a ham for half a century so I guess you could say I'm an old timer though my knowledge and technical skill still remain closer to that of a novice.

My first experience with radio was with CB. I don't know how old I was. Maybe 11 or 12? It was back when CB radios had tubes and just a few channels which were all AM. Call letters were a must. KLA6569. My radio was a Lafayette which I later sold for $5.00. Like all radios that I've ever gotten rid of, I wish I still had it.

My interest in radio evolved and I became a ham.

My first call was WN6QJS in 1965 when I was 14.

The following year I upgraded to general and became WB6UNL.

My father was WB6DDO and my uncle was KN6S. My father and my uncle knew morse code because they served in the Pacific during WWII.

When I was a novice, my receiver was a Drake 2B and my transmitter was a Knight Kit T-150. My antenna was a 14AVQ and my dummy load was a 100 watt light bulb.

Back in the 60's, I didn't know many hams who had transceivers. When I transmitted, I had to turn off the receiver so I wouldn't overload it.

My first DX was a CW QSO with a ham on Johnston Island. Very exciting!

When I was a general, all of my phone contacts were on AM. As AM started to die out, my air time decreased. Getting a radio with SSB was beyond my financial reach.

My license was good for just five years and I let it lapse in 1971, Big mistake. I had to take the exam again in the late '70's. There was no grace period. I remember that I had to study for a long time because I had completely forgotten all that I had learned the first time. It wasn't easy. Fortunately, Radio Shack put out a book with a "programmed learning" structure which was very helpful.

When my ticket arrived in the mail, I felt lucky that my suffix spelled out a word. People think it's a vanity call but there was no such thing in the 70's.

The both times I took my test for general was at the FCC office in the Old Mint Building in San Francisco. The first time I took the code test, you had to have so many correct characters in a row. The second time, they gave you a mulitiple choice test on what they sent. I also had to prove that I could send code with a straight key. I passed, but my sloppy fist made the examiner wince.

I remember I did something wrong like talk or something and the FCC examiner yelled at me. We hadn't even started the test. Fifty years later I still remember getting yelled at.

The first couple of ham licenses they sent me were suitable for framing. In fact, I think it was a requirement to have your license posted in the shack. The last time I got one in the mail, it was a poor quality carbon copy that looked more like a W2. (Recently I heard that you can write to the FCC and request a printed license. So I did, and they sent me one that looks just as nice as nice as the ones from the '60s.)

My first 2 meter radio was a rock bound Wilson HT with a touch tone pad. PL was not in use. I thought that repeater autopatches were really neat especially since this was the time before there were cell phones.

I lived near San Jose State University and I was trusted with the W6YL ham shack key which was really nice. The ham shack was accessible 24 hours a day and it was fun using a decent rig with a good antenna and connecting people far out to sea with friends and family via phone patch.

My current ham shack consists of an old Kenwood 520SE with a variety of problems. It still puts out 140 watts so I use it from time to time but when I do, I have to change bands with pliers and listen to the audio through an old set of computer speakers because the audio board is shot. I also have a Kenwood 120S that only works on 80, 40 an 20 meters and a Kenwood 130S that I use mobile. Recently I bought a FT2900 for 2 meters which feeds into a monoband CP22E Diamond antenna. For HF mobile antennas I use the Iron Horse hamsticks. For my base HF antenna, I tune a random wire fed with ladderline that starts 30 feet high and zig zags down into my backyard to about 7 feet. I have a 60 foot counterpoise I've been experimenting with, along with station grounding, because sometimes the noise level is terrible. I've strung up an 80 meter inverted V that slopes from 20 feet down to 7 feet which is much quieter but at that lower height I lose several S-units on transmit.

I have an FT817 which I really like. I've used it to check into Western Public Service and the Noontime Net with a half watt when band conditions were favorable. I also have an SGC SG2020. The audio receive is poor but it puts out 20 watts which is nice because it's portable without being limited to QRP. Nine times out of ten, if you can be heard with 100 watts, you can be heard with 20.

For packet I use an old Kenwood 2 meter radio, an MFJ TNC and an Ed Fong pvc pipe antenna. I kind of like packet and I have a bunch of old TNC's I got from eBay. Trying to get some of these old TNC's to work is an interesting challenge and it can be exhillerating when I'm successful.

I like connecting to Winlink on HF and 2 meters. But I've found with Winlink and my old equipment is that if I get Winlink working one day, it won't work the next. If something can wrong, it does go wrong. My goal is to up my equipment so I can just flip a switch or two and make a connection. But what happens is something usually doesn't work and I spend an hour or two troubleshooting.

I picked up a couple of Linksys routers with the intention of experimenting with mesh but they're still on the shelf.

Sometimes I think about buying an FT-891 for mobile and a TS-590SG for base. But I'm torn. The old rigs I have put out the same amount of power and have a lot of character. A smaller rig for mobile and a base rig with DSP would be nice, but is it worth the money? Hm. I don't know. The TS-590SG would be nice with the external sdr pan adapater but every TS-590 I've heard on the air sounds muffled. Sometimes I think it would be nicer to get another boat anchor and a tube amp that will heat up the shack on cold nights. Nothing like the smell of burning dust on old, red-hot tubes.

I don't like menus on radios. I like knobs. I don't like needing to constantly look up stuff in the manual.

My hamshack generates so much RF that I had to put my internet router on the other side of the house. One of these days I hope to solve that RF problem. It's really bad. I have a lot more to learn about station grounding and such.

I used to have to my entire shack run on solar power. I hope to set that back up in the near future. Who knows when we'll have another natural disaster?

Lately I've been playing around with digitial modes. FT8 is amazing, but it gets boring after a few days. I crank down the power to QRP to make it more challenging, but that grows old too. Maybe I'll get into RTTY one of these days. Or better yet, get my CW up to speed.

I've been spending a lot of time lately perfecting my antenna setup. It's too bad that SWR doesn't measure antenna efficiency. A lot of what I'm reading appears to be contradictory and the ARRL antenna books don't spend a lot of time on longwire antennas. One way I've been testing efficiency is by logging into WebSDR stations. I have learned one heck of a lot about my signal strength and audio quality by listening to WebSDR which is really important because I'm constantly tinkering with my setup.

A lot of what I used to enjoy about ham radio I can now do with an iPhone--faster, cheaper, better. So why does ham radio still interest me? Beats me. There is something magic about radio. I can't explain it. But if you're a ham and afflicted with the same fascination, you might understand, or at least, sympathize.

Equipment

Rigs:

TS-520SE
TS-120S
TS-130S
FT-817
SG-2020
FT-2900


Antennas:

CP22E
Random wire
Fan dipole for 80 and 40

  

Rev. 76d955ecd7