I was first licensed in 1985 and finally earned my 20wpm Extra ticket in February of 2000 My main ham radio interests are RTTY & SSB contesting, especially RTTY. I also enjoy operating digital modes and chasing DX but am not fanatical about it. I'll make occasional forays into CW to keep my modest CW skills up, but I am not much good at itI also very much enjoy building and operating QRP kit rigs.

In Aug/Sep of 2000 Ioperated from Madagascar, my callsign 5R8GQ, more a holiday than a DXpedition.It was an experience of a lifetime, to actually BE the DX, and not another W6 calling in the crowd. During this trip I won First Place in the CQ DX RTTY Contest, Single Operator All Band Africa.

I am 56 years old, and my profession is Registered Radiologic Technologist ,R.T. (R). Rad Techs use X-Rays in various fashions to produce images of the human body for diagnostic purposes. I have been married for 27 years to my wonderful wife Cris (a Speech-Language Pathologist). She is remarkably tolerant of my ham radio activities and thinks it's an interesting hobby.

Current shack lineup: IC-756PROII, Kenwood TS-940S, Elecraft K2/1000,. Ameritron AL80A, Dentron MT-3000A, Timewave599zx. Plus all the usual junk & accessories.Antenna farm is sparse, just a roof mounted HF6V and an Alpha Delta DX-DD @ 40'. And about 10 monoband QRP kits like all the SWL PSK31 Series (10,20,40, 80m) The SWL White Mountin Series, (20m,40m,75m SSB), the MKARS80A, MMR40, BITX20A and a couple others in various states of (dis) repair, hihi.

My other interests are gardening and listening to music, especially Rock and Roll music from the 1960's and 70's. In particular I enjoy collecting and listening to concert tapes of the San Francisco band "The Grateful Dead". Thanks and 73, Ken