Biography

Getting my ham ticket has been on my bucket list for the last 50 years. I grew up around ham radio and as a kid always enjoyed SWL on my 600 series Zenith Trans-Oceanic and my dads Collins R390. My dad, K1PZY has been a ham for 60+ years. When I re-opened the door into the ham radio world in the Summer of 2018, I find these things called Software Defined Radio, FT8, Whisper, PSK Reporter, APRS, CHIRP, touch screens and waterfalls!

I received my Technician License at the Cranston Public Library in November of 2018. My intro to ham radio has been mostly working FT8 on 6 & 10M on my IC-7100. On occasion bouncing APRS off the ISS with my home brew 3 element yagi and a $50 BTECH HT. I hope to have my general ticket soon and maybe spend some time learning CW and working the satellites.

I received my General on Saturday 6/1/19. I would like to thank the VEC's at the Cranston Library that helped make that possible, a super bunch of guys. In the following weeks I plan to start studying for the Extra. From time to time I think back to when my dad bought me my first radio, I was 7 years old and it was a 9 transistor hand held AM-FM radio.

8/3/19, This morning I went back to the Cranston Library for a third time and passed the Extra exam! Thanks again guys. My feet didn't touch the ground until I was half way to my car. Well aware of this effect I drove home very carefully.

11/12/19, to fill the grey blank on the top of the page I uploaded my favorite picture of myself with my 15 year old Yellow Lab named Olive U. The picture was taken about a year ago. Ms. Olive and her 2 amazing sisters Sandy Cheeks and Katie Binks are no longer with us. For a second time in my life I find comfort navigating loss with the help of radio.

This winter (2020) I plan meet up with my dad at the HamCation event in Orlando. I also want to start learning CW, not because I have to but because I want to. This will surely help to establish some new neural path ways.

Feb 2020, I made my way to my dads new condo in Clearwater, FL with a bag full of ready-made dipole antennas to stuff into his attic. We got his Kenwood TS440 running but the auto tuner was acting up. We made our way over to HamCation in Orlando on Friday. Our main mission was to find a replacement auto tuner. We meet lots of super nice people, asked lots of questions and got to see the latest and greatest and vintage radio gear. I even met up with Eric KJ4YZI of YouTube fame. We bought a few small things and a couple hats with our call signs. We went to almost every table and struck out finding a replacement auto tuner. The tuner was easy to bypass and the antennas I made were usable on 10,15,20 and 40 meters. Dads first contact on 20m was a station in N.Dakota with a 5 x 7 report, not too bad. We'll save the auto tuner for another day. We're already making plans to go to HamCation again in 2021.

Nov 2020, I've been working from home since March. This has given me time to play a little radio during the day. The RF high point of my summer was working K1JT, the father of FT8 on 6M FT8!

I had been looking for some logging software for a while and after a fair amount of research and a YouTube discount code I purchased Ham Radio Deluxe. It took a few sessions to figure out the log book. HDR goes way beyond being a good log book. The goal was to keep my QSL logs up to date and upload to eQSL and LOTW with a mouse click, DONE.

Feb 2021, I didn't make it down to my Dad's or to HamCation this year for obvious reasons. I did finish up a fun WSPR project (late Christmas gift for my dad.) I wanted to make a headless, plug n play, off grid (no internet time connection) WSPRRYPI transmitter my dad could use in Florida.

I used the 20M RPI transmitter board from TARP and a surplus Raspberry PI 3B computer board. On a good day it puts out a whopping .1 watts. After fooling around with $12 GPS dongles and consistently missing the WSPR transmit window I decided to go with the Adafruit 2324 GPS RPI Hat that supports 10HZ and PPS pulse per second time base. The PI's NTP software was reporting something like +/- 200NS! Thank-you again Lady Ada. This setup worked so well I made another one for myself.

I hard coded his call, grid and a transmit schedule into the PI's memory, 3D printed a nice looking enclosure, printed a 1 page instruction manual and sent it off to Florida. Dad had this running with his 20M HOA attic dipole in just a few minutes. Over the phone I walked him through installing WSPR Watch by VK2TPM on his iPad. WSPR spots in the first few hours from his QTH in Clearwater, FL were from Alaska to Australia! A very fun project!

Days have blended into weeks which have blended into months but I did get to witness spring, summer, fall and winter from my back yard. Now I'm seeing spring again. This temporal blur has provided some great daytime DX.

July 2021, I just made my 16th QSO (clean sweep) for the 13 Colonies Special Event. This year every contact I made was via FT8 or FT4, not a single word was spoken. I did listen to a few of the phone pile ups. The operators running these special event stations are true masters of the trade. This is my 2nd year participating in this event and I find it to be a challenge and a lot of fun. I'm glad to say things are starting to get back to normal. -73 and stay save.

Equipment

Icom IC-7100
Astron SS-25M Power Supply
MFJ 849 SWR-Watt Meter
Alpha Delta-2 & 4 Coax Switches
Dell Precision M4700
WSJT-X, HRD



2M,70CM Diamond X200A vertical at 22Ft. through 50Ft. of DXE-400MAX coax
6M, M2 HO-6 Loop at 19Ft. through 50Ft. of DXE-400MAX coax
80,40,20,17,12,10M BMT DX-OCF 7 band dipole at 32Ft. through 91.5Ft. of Carol C-1188 RG58A/U coax
15M Alpha Delta-C inverted V dipole at 19Ft. through 57.5Ft. of Carol C-1188 RG58A/U coax
30M Alpha Delta-C inverted V dipole at 20Ft. through 58Ft. of DXE-400MAX coax

20M WSPRRYPI .1W transmitter
20M inverted V dipole at 15Ft. through 50Ft. of Carol C-1188 RG58A/U coax

BTECH UV-5X3 HT
Mobilinkd TNC2 and TNC3
2M, DIY 3 element Yagi
1.25M DIY 1/4 wave dipole at 12ft through 50Ft. of Carol C-1188 RG58A/U coax

RTL-SDR
Ham it up 1.3 upconverter
MFJ 1708B-SDRS antenna switch

Rig Expert AA-30, ZERO
NANO VNA-H (amazing tool)
Tiny SA