Amateur Radio

    One of my first loves was and is amateur radio, commonly known a "ham" radio. It all started in the summer between the 6th and 7th grade when I discovered that you could hear far away stations on the AM broadcast bands at night. From my home in Bellevue, Nebraska I had logged many different stations on all the frequencies from 530 to 1600 khz. From Ontario to Albequrque, to Bonaire, to Saskatchewan. On my 13th birthday I received a digital watch and the little instruction manual included the frequencies for several shortwave time stations. 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 didn't mean much to me until I remembered that we had an old Telefunken console stereo which had these numbers on its dial . I soon became hooked on listening to foreign broadcast. Later that year I built a Science Fair kit that also picked up shortwave and it was followed by a Realistic multiband portable. It came to pass by the time I entered High School I also got on the CB. Made a lot of friends and acquaitances there such as R.C., Moonshiner, Double M, and Electron .

    It kind of stagnated there for a while, it was until my senoir year in college that I went for my ham license and became N0HRF/5 in February 1987. From the get go I was into many aspects of the hobby. Of course I had a 2 meter FM HT, a Heathkit HW6502, to talk to my fellow club members (SCARS, South Canandian Amateur Radio Society of Norman, OK). I bought second hand an old HW-8 qrp radio from NW5M and made several DX QSOs with my meager 1.5 watts on 15M CW. In the mean time I was commissioned in the US Navy and was due to ship out around the 4th of July. I went to the HAMCOM in Dallas, TX and picked up an LS-202A. This was a very odd rig. It was a 2M HT with SSB on it! That radio along with a 30 watt amplifier and a 5 element Yagi launched me into the world of weak signal VHF. The June VHF QSO party was memorable in that it featured a prolonged double hop E-skip on 2 meters that reached from coast to coast. And there I was in the middle talking to staions in Florida one minute and talking to a staion in Arizona the next. Over the years as I moved around the country I acquired more gear and made many contacts and upgraded  to an Advanced class License, KE0YG. 1989 to 1991 found me in Keflavik Iceland where I was DX and in hot demand. I seemed to gravitate to the digital modes and the high end of the HF spectrum. 1991 and on I was active from Suffolk,VA on weak signal VHF/UHF. 6 meters, 2 meters, and 432mhz.

    Since moving up to West Virginia I haven't been too active. The internet and computers have certainly drawn my attention away from my hobby, but that will change in a while. I do hope to put up a tower soon, or at least get my VHF beams back up in the air so I can be somewhat active again.

Here are some Amateur Radio links you may find interesting........

American Radio Relay League, ARRL .

QRZ? An online database that gives contact information for all US hams.

What's that? It is a new form of digital communication with a bandwdith of 31hz and it operates in a manner similar to RTTY. No expensive controller is needed. your radio can be hooked directly to your computer's souncard to use this mode. Having a problem downloading? Download the program here.