Biography

Welcome to my page. Previously KN4TVB, now N4MNW as of July 2019.

My name is Neale (I use my middle name, just to confuse everyone) and it sure made a pudding of my FCC registration.

I first took my Amateur radio license in 1986, at age 22, in South Africa. I passed, but was limited to the 2-meter band, pending a stiff Morse code test. Two meters turned out to be rather unsatisfying, especially as every night my HF scanner could pick up the ship hams off of Cape Town and the Hams on Réunion Island, near Madagascar.

Between University, moving to the U.S. in 1994, work commitments, getting married and having children, etc., I never quite got up to speed on the Morse stuff and Ham eventually dropped off the radar for the next 33 years. With the Morse code requirements eventually being dropped in the U.S., I decided to take the plunge again in 2019 and managed to pass the Technician and General exams and a month later upgraded to Amateur Extra.

I purchased an ICOM IC-7300, IT-100 Auto-tuner and threw a 102’ G5RV inverted V up in the trees behind my house in the Atlanta Suburbs. Can you spot my antennae in the QSL card picture??? I hope not! It’s pretty invisible, which keeps the neighbors, HOA, etc. off my back, but is no doubt limiting my range considerably. Nonetheless, within a few days on the air I managed to contact several of the surrounding states and was surprised to break through a pile-up on 20m to make my first international QSO with a station in Slovenia and a week later with a Spanish station. Since then, I have discovered the joys (and misery) of FT8, and over the past 3 months have Worked All States and made QSOs with 40 different countries. I can imagine a 100’ tower eventually sitting out back, but for now am having fun with my piece of "dental floss" up in the trees.

Hope to catch you on the bands.

73

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Icom IC-7300,
IT-100 Auto-tuner
102’ G5RV inverted V