I've been a ham for 45 years now (since I was 12 years old). See my bio for an extended ham radio biography. In late 2000, after being "equipment-less" for several years, Santa brought a Sierra QRP rig and I built it during the winter, then later a PSK20 kit arrived at my birthday! Until spring 2003, I was active only QRP CW on 40, 30, 20 and 15 meters plus 20 meter PSK31. In late May 2003, I bought a Yaesu FT-897, my first new commercial rig in almost 20 years. What a great radio! I use it both at home and in the car. I also have a working PSK80 Warbler, but until recently, I've been "antenna challenged" because I was living in a condominium and using an indoor 40M dipole in the attic. In Jan 2006, I built an Elecraft KX1 "ultra-portable" CW transceiver and have been having a great time making contacts with it, often operating portable near my building at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In Dec 2007, I completed a basic Elecraft K2 and not only is it the best rig and best receiver I've ever used, but now I'm hooked on building Elecraft kits for sure! I'm a member of the Falmouth Amateur Radio Association in Falmouth, MA on Cape Cod, and was the club's president for 2005 and 2006. In mid-August 2008, I moved to a house in Waquoit (East Falmouth), MA and am just beginning to get back on the air with outdoor antennas after 6 years in a condo!!
Present Equipment:
I like to get on during the various contests (ARRL DX, CQ WPX, June VHF QSO Party, the monthly QRP Spartan Sprints and NAQCC Sprints) and make a few contacts. Most of my contacts are CW, but if it's a SSB contest, I'll get on for a few phone contacts also. With my indoor antenna, CW is a bit more effective, but SSB works. Contesters have GOOD ears and they need even the weak ones - a contact is a contact, regardless of the signal strength!
For PSK31 with the FT-897 or the PSK-20 I currently use a Dell Inspiron notebook PC running Digipan v2.0 software. I don't use a special interface to the sound card, just a couple of patch cables and a serial cable. The FT-897 even has digital VOX, so all you need are the 2 audio cables. Setting the TX level with the Windows control is a bit touchy and would probably benefit from a trimpot of some sort in the audio line, but it's NOT necessary to spend money for a special interface (i.e Rigblaster or MFJ) for either of my current rigs. The PSK-20 puts out several watts to my attic dipole and contacts with North America and Europe are not difficult at this power level.
I've also briefly experimented with a couple of RTTY and SSTV software packages (MM-TTY and MM-SSTV) and both appear to work fine - now all I need is more free time!
Oh, and check out ARRL's Logbook of the World - a great way to get confirmations! Got my C5Z (Gambia) contact confirmed this way, for example. Everybody should add LOTW to their "bag of tricks"! I use N3FJP's ACLog 3.0 software and can upload new log info directly.
Latest News - 2008
Well, a very wild summer! After trying to sell our condo for over a year, we'd pretty much resigned ourselves to waiting out the terrible housing market for a couple of years. Then, at the end of June, the house next door to my daughter and family came up for sale at a great price. And it's only about 6 years old (we watched it being built during visits to my daughter), on the end of a dead-end street with about 0.8 acres, and conservation land beyond. We made a full price offer and the deal was on! What about the condo? We rented it out!
Just to make things more interesting, we had commitments for 2+ weeks of vacation in PEI again, the last week of July and the first week of August, a closing on the new house set for August 15 and a move on the 17th! Luckily, the new renters for the condo didn't want it until August 30, and we had a lot of our stuff already packed and stored not to far from the new house (condo and house are about 15 miles apart). So we packed like crazy, went on vacation, came back and packed like crazy, scheduled movers to help us, closed on the new house, moved 2 days later, and here we are!
So, besides lots of big trees for antennas (too many for the moment, actually), I got a finished basement room (the basement is walkout on the east) with a big window to the east into the bulk of our property. I've just begun to get a temporary station set up and quickly threw up my portable 40M doublet on an MFJ 33 foot mast outside the window just this past Sunday, 14 Sep. Running just the K2 so far and have made a few contacts on 40M as far as the west coast, and a nice long ragchew just last night on 80M with a fellow in Ontario. RF conditions in the house and neighborhood are very quiet - great! This morning, VK and ZL was sounding fairly good on 40 CW. Looking forward to getting a more permanent antenna up in the trees real soon!
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