Biography

First licenced in 1983. A little over 6 months later (the waiting period) received the 10 metre phone endorsement. Soon after I passed the exam for the Amateur Digital Licence, which included the theory and regulations for the Advanced licence class. Once the full year waiting period was complete, I passed the 15 w.p.m. code test that gave me the Advanced licence. Since then, the Digital licence has gone away, and the code endorsement now reads 5 w.p.m., which is the only code exam remaining in Canada. Privileges are the same, although pulse modulation is no longer available in the lower UHF bands like it used to be - not that I ever used it.

My rig back then was a Yaesu FT-101E. I used it until about 1989 and then took a 23 year break from ham radio after about 500 contacts logged. I've given the FT-101E away for parts but still have a working Yaesu FT-2700RH dual band FM mobile that still works, although I don't really use it.

After getting back on the air about 2 years ago I have made about 7,000 contacts, not including the 2 club Field Day operations (about 500 more for that). I use SSB, CW (still rusty but use it a lot for DX QSOs which are relatively easy due to their brevity), RTTY, JT65, JT9 and little PSK. In 2014 I have spent a lot of time working W1AW portable operations, trying to triple-play each state at least once. I have almost 1,000 QSOs logged which is my goal for the end of the year which will be hit without any problems and also made the top level of the ARRL Centennial QSO party. It will be somewhat of a relief that it is over soon (today is December 8th, 2014).

For 2015 I am vaguely planning to get a tower put up and try some unusual modes, but will also try to gain experience in most digital modes as well as fill in my log with more JT65 and JT9. I will keep contesting at a modest level, not trying to win but to get contacts in the log. I expect that within a year or two I will either push harder on contests or slacken off, more likely the latter. I'm interested in weak signal work and hopefully with a tower I will be able to do some.

I'm also the President of the York Region Amateur Radio Club, which is quite an active group. If you live in (or near) York Region please consider joining us. We have active public service and EmComm groups, as well as rag chewers, DXers, and experimenters, and we put on a creditable Field Day operation, which will include Winter Field Day in 2015.

I don't really hang out on any frequency or mode, although the club has a 6m net on Monday nights at 8pm Eastern on 50.135. Having said that, I plan to spend the months from January to April getting people to try out new modes and bands each week instead of just 6m SSB. Once May comes we'll resume 6m so that we can catch Es when it pops up.

Since getting back into the hobby I've achieved WAS Triple-Play and DXCC (125 achieved but not yet applied for), all through LoTW but I will reply to all QSL cards received and send some out unsolicited (like 6m contacts) via the bureau or occasionally snail mail. I wish that all contesters, especially in ARRL contests, would use LoTW. Once it's set up, it take about 30 seconds to load the contest log. If you really want my card, send me an email or your own card!

73, Chris

Equipment

Elecraft K3, KPA500 and KAT3 which work well together. I have been contemplating getting the P3 panadapter but Elecraft seems to have stalled development. I would have liked to have seen HDMI out and wider bandwidth. Despite some limitations, I'm reasonably happy using a simple Softrock IF Lite II with HDSDR. The limitations are lack of point and click QSY and frequency error when the IF is shifted.

When I got back into the hobby I built a SoftRock RXTX Ensemble for 10-12-15 and made about 100 contacts on it. It was quite a lot of fun. I used it with a Dell XPS 9100 desktop system with Windows 7. It has a mirrored system drive which lets me sleep. It also has a 12 port audio card which comes in handy from time to time. I now use the computer with DXLab, WSJT-X, N1MM, Codec2, FLDIGI and other stuff with my K3. How different that is to my old FT101E and so much more fun!

There's CAT5E running through a lot of the house at 1GB and in the computer closet I use a Synology DS1813+ for NAS storage and a Raspberry Pi for network support (DHCP, DNS, TFTP, NTP, etc), telephone switch (Asterisk PBX) and mail server (Postfix and Dovecot). That's a lot of stuff on one little R-Pi.

The antenna is my original (1984) Butternut HF6V Vertical. With the tuner it works pretty well on everything from 80 to 6 metres, although it is far from ideal on 6. Despite that I have 12 states and 4 countries logged on 6 in just one sporadic E season.

Plans for this year are to put up a 15m (maximum allowed in my town without an insane amount of municipal shenanigans) tower. My dream is to top it with a Steppir beam and a Mosely 2m long beam, and also add a wire antenna and shunt feed the tower for low bands. A really good radial field will have to wait until I replace the driveway. I also want to put 6m and 2m preamps (SSB Electronics looks good) and will enjoy tackling the control systems setup, probably by programming a Atmel microprocessor. After one year the Canadian regulations allow for a 25% increase in antenna system height without involving the municipality and I'm definitely planning on taking advantage of that rule.