ABOVE: Jan, K1ND (left) and yours truly at the 2009 Hazel Park Swap.

Although I've had a ticket since 1971, I was never very active UNTIL I got hooked again after going to our club's 2002 Field Day activities. Since then I have really gotten back into the hobby:

* I am back on the HF bands. I work mostly CW on 40m, 30m, 20m, and 15m with an IC-746PRO and an assortment of wire antennas, including a fan dipole with 40m and 30m legs (which makes it usable on 15m and 10m as well) and a 20m ground plane antenna. I also built an Elecraft KX-1 and have a lot of fun operating it portable from parks on battery power.

* I've increased my code speed to 30 wpm. Feel free to send that fast if you read this while we're in contact. I'm proud of this achievement, and am continually trying to get guys to work more CW.

* I regularly participate in contests. I especially enjoy the smaller contests, such as the state QSO parties, and have even garnered a few certificates for being the highest scorer from the state of Michigan.

* I am the president and webmaster for our local ham club, ARROW Communications Assn. I  used to be the MI Section  ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator, but now I'm serving as the section's Training Manager. My colleageue, Bruce, KD8PAB, and I do a regularly-scheduled One-Day Tech Class, and we're hoping to teach others how to do this.

* I now write a ham radio blog (www.kb6nu.com). See what Stand Horzepa, WA1LOU, ARRL Contributing Editor has to say about my blog at http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2004/04/23/1/.

* I teach a General Class license course. Over the last four years, I've helped more than 50 Techs become Generals. I don't know about my students, but I am learning quite a bit by teaching the class. :) My 2008 class has about a dozen students in it.

* I am also working on several projects aimed at getting kids into ham radio. For example, we have been doing special event operations at Ann Arbor's Hands-On Museum (www.aahom.org), and were recently awarded a $10k grant by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to help set up a permanent station there. We expect the station to be up and running by the end of October 2008. This is a LOT of fun.

Along these lines, one of the things I've done is to write A Parent's Guide to Ham Radio - http://www.kb6nu.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/ParentsGuidetoHamRadio.pdf . This is a tri-fold brochure designed to give parents of the kids I talk to a brief intro to ham radio and links to websites where they can learn more about ham radio. You must get parents involved if you want to get middle schoolers into ham radio. Feel free to download and print up as many of these brochures as you need.

If anyone out there is serious about--or even mildly interested in--getting kids involved in amateur radio, contact me. We need more people to work on these things.

* I like playing with antennas. I have a bunch of ideas for different antennas that I want to try, including a loop antenna fed with ladder line, a linear-loaded dipole a la the Cobra antenna, and a homemade hex beam. I also want to learn to use antenna modeling software.

* I am collecting as many QSLs as I can from stations whose calls spell out words, i.e. K4MOW, W8BUG, etc. I have close to 100 of these cards now.

Professionally, I'm a freelance technical writer and website developer, although I've been doing more websites than writing lately.