I'm a ham. I received my Technician class license in 1993. For a while, I was a Tech-Plus, but due to the rules changes, and my own inactivity, I renewed back at Technician. My biggest problem with this is that I never intended to renew as a Tech. I always expected that I'd have had my General by renewal time. As of August 5, 2003 I am a General. It took a little longer, but I got it.

If you're studying for your license, or working on an upgrade, you'll need to practice taking the tests. There are several sites on the net that offer practice tests. My own favorite is eHam. Look for the practice tests link in the left column. eHam is good for other things, as well. The main problem I have is that I'm a news-junkie, and they don't seem to have new articles as often as I like. That's okay, though. They offer good services and a good callsign lookup, as well.

The best callsign lookup I've found is on QRZ. More detail, and lots of other callsign related stuff.

You'll find me active on two meters on the Carthage NC repeater. You can find a short repeater listing on my repeater page. I'm also active on ten meters, either in the novice voice band or up on 28.600 FM simplex. More likely, I'll be down on SSB, but the FM frequency is good for around-town talk, if needed. That's because my HTX-10 is the power radio I have in my car, and another at home.

When you hear the saying "propogation begins at home," think about my Radio Shack HTX-200 handheld two-meter rig. From my location, or pretty much anywhere in town, its meager two watts isn't going to reliably hit anything. Talking on a repeater in the next county or further, is nearly impossible. With some research and a bunch of copper pipe, though, I started to have some fun. I made a few J-poles, but still couldn't get that two watts to punch through enough to talk on the Carthage machine, around 35 miles away. I did find a slat from an old twin bed, made of pine. It was just long enough to make a 4 element yagi from. Since I didn't want to wait until I had all the right supplies, I made do with what I had. What I had was the slat, pipe, and nails. I simply nailed the pipe to the slat, trying to get them as straight as possible (and they aren't all that straight). The result is an ugly 4 element beam. I mounted it atop a ten-foot length of copper pipe, which probably reduces its efficiency a bit, and slid that pipe down into the gutter on the second floor of the house. When I got it pointed in the direction I wanted, I used nylon twine to fix it there, and tied the twine off on the first floor gutter about 15 feet away. The results seem to quickly becoming legendary, as the members of the Moore County club all seemed to light up when I mentioned that I was the two-watt guy. I've got to get that thing hooked up so I can rotate it better, now that I've got a radio capable of more power. Maybe I'll even find a length of PVC and make a proper yagi, someday.

When I get my code up to speed, you'll also find me on 80 meters, with my little Pixie2 QRPp rig.

There is no longer a Central Carolina Amateur Radio Society in Sanford, NC. The webpage hasn't been updated since 1999, and some of the main folks aren't even in the area anymore. If any of the local Sanford area hams want to get together and form an informal group, I'm game. In the meantime, I'm a member of both the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society and the Moore County Amateur Radio Society.

There's a hill in Sanford that I park on regularly, that puts me at 500 feet. That's 40 feet lower than the highest point in Lee County, so not bad. I regularly try to talk on repeaters that are just out of range, to see what I can hit. My best so far is North Wilkesboro. It shares a repeater pair with Wilmington, which was my goal. 130 miles at 2 watts, and my signal was described as very strong. I had a nice chat with W4WD. My equipment was the aforementioned HTX-200 with a mag-mount antenna. The moral? Try powering down a little and stretching a watt as far as you can.