Amateur Radio Station
Ham Radio – originally licensed in 1988 as KC4IFN (Novice), upgraded to Technician N4UYI. Currently hold Extra class License N4NRW (Vanity). ARRL VEC Volunteer Examiner. I am the repeater Trustee for the W4RRC 2 Meter Repeater in Batesburg-Leesville, SC. (147.255+ / 123Hz PL tone) I enjoy HF Rag Chewing and am frequently found on 40M. I am a frequent participant at Ham fests in SC and NC. I enjoy purchasing broken Electronics equipment that others have given up on and challenging my repair and troubleshooting skills repairing said equipment. I have a shop dedicated to this endeavor – details can be found in the Lab Equipment section. From my home page photo you can tell I display no single allegiance to any particular brand of Radio. I currently own and operate, Elecraft, Icom, Kenwood, Yaesu and Collins. I have built both an Elecraft K2 and K3. The K3 / KPA-500 is currently my main operating rig. Antennas include a 3 element Cushcraft Tri Band Beam atop a 55 foot tower. On top of that is an 11 element 2 Meter beam. For 40 and 80M operation I run a trapped dipole (almost a flat top) up at 35 Feet. A fanned dipole for 17 Meters rounds out the site. My station has a hint of “Green”. I rely on a 40 amp Hour 12 volt sealed lead acid backup battery that is solar charged via 100 watts of solar panel on the roof.
Equipment
- Alliance HD-73 Rotor Control
- Auto Beam Aimer– project from past issue of “73 Magazine”
- Collins 75S-1 with optional CW filter, 32S-1 and 30L-1
- Amp Meter - for monitoring Solar Panel Charge current
- Kenwood TM-V71 Dual Band 2M / 70 CM
- Kenwood TS-870SAT – All Mode HF 100 Watt
- Yaesu FTDX-5000 with SM-5000 - All mode HF + 6 Meters 200 Watt
- Elecraft K3 – All Mode HF and 6 M, 100 Watt, Digital Voice Recorder, General Coverage Rx, 6.0, 2.4 and 1.8 kHz filters.
- Softrock lite SDR for K3 IF Panadapter
- Elecraft KPA-500 solid state HF Linear Amplifier
- Heathkit SB-1000 – 160-10M 1 KW Linear Amplifier, Soft Start mod.
- B & W VS1500A antenna matching network