I was first licensed in 1971 as a 14 year old novice with the call WN4UZA. I upgraded to a general ticket in 1972 with the call WB4UZA. In 1980 I changed to the 2X2 call KC4HL and in 2000 to my current vanity call K4NC.

I have been happily married now for 27 years and have three sons.I am a consulting professional electrical engineer by trade. With only one son at home now, I am finding more time for ham radio. My favorite mode over the years has been CW. Recently, I have dabbled a little in contesting. With only wire antennas and no amp, contesting has been a challenge to say the least. The recently improved sunspot numbers has me operating 10 meter CW more and more.

The primary rig is a Collins S-line that I purchased in the mid 70's. It just keeps working year after year with little maintenance. I've had little incentive to replace it, though I have been thinking more and more about how cool it would be to have a receiver with DSP. The Collins gear may be taking a backseat soon.  My other radio gear includes a Hammarlund HQ 180 receiver, a Hammarlund HQ 110A receiver and a Swan 600T transmitter I used in the 70s. 

My antenna "farm" consists of two antennas. A 40 meter extended double zepp (172 feet long) hung between two trees at a little over 50 feet up in the air. I feed it with 450 ohm ladder line. With an antenna tuner it gives reasonable performance on all bands. With its many sharp lobes on the higher bands, this antenna typically gets me either a very good signal report or a very poor one depending on the other station's relative location around the antenna. The other antenna is an 80 meter quarter wave wire vertical hung from a tree limb. I currently have sixteen 60 foot ground radials installed with plans to install 16 more. Even with a limited number of radials, I have worked many stations on it in Europe and SA. I feed this antenna with 50 ohm RG-8 coax. I have thought about feeding the center point of the vertical with ladder line to give me a vertical dipole on 10-40 meters. This could help with the zepp's lobe issue on the higher bands. Maybe one day.