Biography

I have been licensed since 1976, and enjoy most facets of Ham Radio, but enjoy DXing and Rag Chewing the most. I am Retired from the US Army, and the State of Tennessee.

After I upgraded to General in 2001, I pulled down my large 7 element 10m monobander and installed this Cushcraft X7 to allow me to operate on the other bands. It has done a outstanding job.

Well, I finally got my 40 and 75m antenna up again. I went with a in a inverted V configuration. It has the wires separated by about 20ft at the ends. This performs very well so far, and I am very pleased with it. I am looking forward to some 40m action over the remainder of the Winter.

The shack consist of a Kenwood TS950SDX, a TS890S, and a Ameritron AL82 amplifier, plus other supporting pieces.

During my time in the Army, I was stationed in France, Germany 2 times, Vietnam, and Korea 4 times. I visited many other countries while in the Army, and several others after Retiring.


While in Korea for the 4th time, I was HL9JV and was assigned at Uijongbu, about 15 miles north of Seoul. I decided to make a wire beam and ended up with between 3 and 6 element beams for 40 through 10 meters. I was instructed that my radio equipment must be secured when I was not using it, so I mounted a wall locker on its side, to the top of my desk, then installed everything inside of it.

During my 4th tour in Korea as HL9JV, I got started in RTTY. I used a old Army TT4 unit that I borrowed from a Jeep, and a demodulator I built from a kit.


This is the Teletype unit that was used in the US Army Ratt Rigs with the GRC 106 radio set. The one I was using was just like this, but was missing the sound deadening cover. The TT4 turned out to be way too loud for me to use in my quarters without the cover, so I picked up a Robot 800 and 400, which were very high tech back then.

Fast forward over 30 years, I am having a lot of fun using one of the many sound card programs, and a Rigblaster Nomic unit. I checked around and everyone told me that the rtty program MMTTY was one of the best available, and it is free. After trying it, I decided I want to use it, along with DXTelnet and DX4Win logging program. I have been using these 2 programs together DXing since the late 1990s, and they make a perfect combination. I checked, and the newer versions of DX4WIN has MMTTY built in, so I upgraded to version 9.03 and it is a perfect combination, and handles FT8 also.

I took a break from Ham Radio from 2006 to 2014 to build my play car, so missed these last two.

See you in the pile up. :) I still need BS7 Scarbourgh Reef and FT5W Crozet

I retired in 1998 so I could travel, and enjoy my hobbies. Besides Ham Radio, I enjoy tinkering with cars.

I was able to make the DXCC Honor Roll on 10m as a Tech. I upgraded to General 2 months later.

My next goal is Number 1 Honor Roll. Two more to go, then it is time to get my Extra. :)

Worked DXCCs: