Biography

Amateur radio operator since May 9, 2000. I work some CW up to 20 WPM (20 WPM if I'm on frequently,) some phone, a little digital, all casual operating. I might make contacts during contests but I don't compete. I print my own QSL cards when needed so they are a bit crude, but they get the job done. I QSL direct within the USA, and use the ARRL QSL Bureau for DX.

I have a compact station and a small city lot with peculiar dimensions that made putting a tower in tricky. It all works fairly well but the performance of the antennas isn't what I hoped due to the confined space.

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Three band, open-sleeve or air coupled dipole antenna for 40 and 30 meters and an untuned wire near 17 meters hanging over the house by the ends at 35 feet high from trees. The wire is oriented east and west. Used on other bands including 80, 15, 10, and 6 meters plus the WARC bands with a tuner. It has been used on 160 meters, but at low power. Antenna was home brewed in 2002 from a plan in the W6SAI Antenna Handbook. The untuned wire was tuned to 20 meters but I changed it to try to get 17 meters with it. Interaction makes that impossible to tune to 17 meters. The hope was to reduce interaction with the beam antenna more recently installed. It didn't work. According to Mosley I need at least 17 feet of separation between the two and there are only a couple of feet of separation.

Mosley TA33Jr Tri-band beam antenna. Unfortunately, it's close to the open sleeve dipole and it doesn't work as expected due to interaction between the two.

Cushcraft AR-270 144/440 MHz Vertical

US Tower TX-438 38 ft Tower next to the house. There is no yard to space it away in.

Alinco DR-135 TPMklll 2 meter base radio with internal TASCO TNC

Alinco DR-605 VHF/UHF Mobile Radio

Hi Mite 20 from Small Wonders Labs built from kit.

Elecraft KX1 built from kit

Icom IC-746PRO

MFJ-989C tuner

SB220 amplifier

Yaesu FT-757GX for a backup radio

MFJ-948 Tuner for use with the Yaesu FT-757GX

SB610 monitor scope

TGE N8XJK Boost Regulator

Deep Cycle 90 AH battery

DieHard automatic battery charger

Alinco DM-330MV power supply

MFJ dc power strip

HP Laptop running Windows 8.1

FLDIGI

Ham Radio Delux

N3JFP logging software

Heil Proset headphone/microphone combination

Heil footswitch