My Radio History
Field Day 2007
|
Field Day 2002
|
Prompted by much encouragement from KB7YWE, I first got my license in October of 1995 at a Hamfest in Caldwell, Idaho, mainly because I wanted to get into packet radio. I was soon thereafter introduced to RACES by KB7YWE and N6UGP where I got to learn a lot about 2 meter communication. Most importantly, the RACES participation gave me the chance to practice using 2 meters for local communication. I also got to meet great hams K7TIH, KC7OWF, N7UBO, N7FZA, and KC7VOI.
During this time I was also a member of the Voice of Idaho ARC. Here I met a lot of cool people and got to help out with parade duty and ATV duty at the Boise River festival.
In late 1996/early 1997 the Hewlett Packard Boise Amateur Radio Club (HPBARC) was born. I was one of the original members of the group and have stayed active in HPBARC until I left HP in 2005. In working along side of N6UGP, KB7YWE, KB7UKR, KQ7B, N7DHL, N7MTZ and WV7I, I learned a lot about packet radio, antenna construction, repeater controllers, and many other things about ham radio. Many of these hams were instrumental in helping me learn CW and pass my general written exam. The Hewlett Packard Boise Amateur Radio Club (HPBARC) runs the 147.26+ repeater in Boise, Id. I still look for AB7HP on Field Day, the Idaho QSO party, and other events, just to make contact and say hi.
In May of 2000, I passed my 5WPM code and in March of 2001, I upgraded to General. On March 24th, I made my first HF QSO with VK2CA, an Australian station participating in contest.
Equipment
Back in the day.
When I first started, I had a small chevy S10 pickup truck. In that truck, I had a 25W RadioShack HTX-10, a ball mounted 1/4 wave vertical antenna, a mag-mount dual band vertical and an Icom IC-2350H dual band mobile radio.
In my shack, which was a room in the house that I owned in Boise, Idaho. I was running on a homemade 40M 1/4 wave dipole, with a 50W Ten-Tec Scout 555 Transceiver, a dual band vertical antenna on a home made ground plane and a couple of 2m handhelds (Standard 158A and a Radio Shack HTX-202). For packet, I had a Kantronics KPC-3 and an 3W Icom IC-215 (crystaled to 145.01, 05, & 09) running through a eMachines etower 366c at a frequency of 145.09 MHz. For portable packet, I'd use the KPC-3 with my Standard 185A.
Now
My current setup is on my shack page