Biography

Welcome! I am Jeff Young, N8CMQ, and I have been a general since 1984 till now.
I originally started as a novice, WN8PAW, in 1973 till 1975, before you could renew a novice call.

9 or 10 years passed before I became a general, and it was the same person that taught me the novice material that taught me the general material, my high school science teacher!

Amateur radio is one reason I have been in the electronics profession. In high school, I had a job repairing CB radios and some automotive audio gear. After high school, I went to DeVry Institute of Technology. I received an associates degree in electronics technology after 18 months of study. While I was at DeVry, I worked for a small company repairing consumer electronics, mostly automotive audio equipment, but also some CBs and other radio gear.

After graduating from DeVry, I started working for a computer manufacturing firm. I developed my digital skills while I was there. The computers were for accounting primarily, and they were slightly behind the times. I had a Radio Shack Color Computer that I ran a unix version of operating system called OS-9. With this combination and added hardware of a 10 meg hard drive and 256k of ram, I ran a bulletin board for a few years before the internet was affordable. I was able to get on and use the internet for $6.50 an hour at the time.

After the company I worked for went out of business, I went through a few jobs working on commercial video games repairing and modifying them. This actually led to the job I had as an avionics technician. I had been working there for 35 years as of 2020. This job has helped me become better in many areas of radio electronics.

One of my favorite subjects is antennas! Due to my immersion in avionics and the different antennas used on aircraft and aviation installations, I quickly learned much about the different antennas and their positive and negative benefits. Since then, I have been working on my ground mounted vertical antenna system. This has become a passion with me, and there will be more on that later.

Equipment

My current radio is an Icom IC-735 transceiver backed up by an older Icom IC-720A.
The IC-720A is in sad shape tho, it needs major work and I don't have the desire to do it as I would rather put the time into my dream station. The IC-735 was in worse shape, and I spent too much time and money resurrecting it from the dead. However, it works very well for such a series of failures. Every time I thought I had it working, some other problem would show up, and I didn't want to quit, as I knew I could repair it!

My dream station is a Hallicrafters SX-101 and HT-32. I have almost completed restoration and modification of the SX-101, and when I am done with that, I will start on the HT-32.

I mentioned the antenna system in my bio, and it is a very modified 4 band trap vertical that I have owned since I became a general, and my elmer gave me his amateur radio station before he passed.

The antenna is a mixture of traps I have rebuilt due to the plastic insulators broke and fell apart. I replaced them with insulators I cut from lexan plastic, and they have held up fairly well since the repairs. I replaced the tubing for the mast as I modified the antenna per W2FMI Jerry Sevick's articles in QST back in the 70s. and the base was rebuilt and the hardware was replaced with stainless hardware to eliminate the corrosion.

I have tried mounting this antenna at various heights above ground with different radials, however, none of the options I have tried has worked as well as having it ground mounted with a LOT of radials, and when I say a LOT, I have over 144 radials down, and I plan on adding more!

So when you hear my station on the air, I am running 100 watts or less into a ground mounted vertical, and I am able to work the pileups during contests and DX contacts without an amplifier or beam. Altho, I have been learning how to use a leanear amp by observation, and hope to build a splatterbox 2000 soon! 73s! N8CMQ ;)