Amateur Radio

I was first licensed as a novice (WN8EHS) in 1969 in Boardman, Ohio. Special thanks to John Petrek, W8BNO who gave me my Novice test.

My receiver was a Hammarlund HQ-170 and my transmitter was a crystal controlled 75 watt Viking Challenger. Novice tickets in those days were only good for two years, non-renewable. You HAD to up-grade! So I did, to Advanced, and my call changed to WB8EHS in 1971. Also at that time you could not go directly to Extra from Novice. (Don't ask why.) You had to be a general or advanced for at least a year.

Thanks to the FCC Vanity call sign program, I changed my call to W8EHS on October 1, 1997.

My entire original station grew from Heathkits. I had the complete SB series. It served me well for over 25 years. In that time period I made four major moves. Three years I lived in 1-land in New Durham, New Hampshire near Lake Winnipesaukee. Then I moved to 5-land in Plano (Dallas) Texas. There I used a QRP Heathkit HW-8 and an HW-9 almost exclusively for about a five year period. Very stealth. Indoor antennas, etc. I sold everything except my Heath SB-220 Amplifier. (Which I still haven't used in almost 10 years.!) I purchased a Ten-Tec OMNI VI when I moved back to Boardman. I remained there for about three years. I am now back in the Dallas, Texas area and have bought a house in Frisco, Texas. My favorite HF modes are CW and digital. Mostly CW. The OMNI is a GREAT rig.

The antenna I now use in Texas is a Cushcraft R7 Vertical. The R7 is a great antenna but very narrow on 40 Meters. I have it tuned for CW on 40 and usually prefer to use a dipole for SSB on that band. I like the R7 because I can work all the WARC bands very easy.

I have an Alinco DR 1200 data radio I used to run 24 hours a day on 2 meter packet. I have run packet since the first TAPR TNC-1 kit was made available. (It still works fine.) I prefer to run TNOS tcp/ip on packet. My active TNC is a Kantronics Data Engine (DE). I have programed EPROM's to run JNOS40 in memory on the DE but am currently back in the standard mode. Currently the packet station is not on the air. The popularity of this mode has declined considerably with the widespread availability and speed of Internet connections.

I maintain contact with the MVARA (Mahoning Valley Amateur Radio Association) I belonged to in Ohio. Here is their Home Page I was also the newsletter editor for the PARK (Plano Amateur Radio Klub) in Plano, Texas for two years and published their newsletter (The Parking Ticket) by mail and on the WWW.

6 / 25-26 / 05 I took my semi-pro movie camera (Panasonic AG-DVC-80) to the PARK ARRL Field Day and shot a lot of what was going on. I cut it all down to a 13 minute video. Here are the links to PARK FD 2005:

RealMedia Format - 21.4 MB

Windows Media Format - 24.7 MB

Quicktime Format - 27.5 MB