KC9CS

I was licensed first as WD9AMW in 1975, during college. I was going to Western Carolina University and taking radio electronics at Southwestern Technical Institute in Western North Carolina. During those electronics classes I got my Novice class ticket. That lasted a couple of weeks when I upgraded to General Class and Advanced Class in one weekend at the Charlotte, NC Hamfest. I had a Johnson Viking II transmitter and VFO, along with a Hallicrafters SX-28 as a radio set for a couple years, but mostly worked the college ham station. My first purchased rig was a pair of Yaesu Twins -- the FR-101 Digital and the FL-101 transmitter with the 2m board installed. I played with improving the front end sensitivity with matched Schottky diodes. Antennas then became the next interest as I had lots of northern Illinios farmland fencelines and trees to run long wires, beverages, I used an 85 foot high windmill tower as a radio tower. From up on top where the beam was we could see the 55 miles to the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago

During this time my interests in ham radio have varied, mostly with the solar sunspot cycles which were phenomenol in the 70's and 80's. I had a lot of fun running QRP for a long time, then built a 2 tube 4-400A amplifier and ran high power. Now that amp is gone, and it's back to a commercial "small" amp running 1000 watts on occasion but still having fun with QRP. Today, I'm enjoying some of the digital modes such as PSK-31 and SSTV, still some RTTY and love CW chats, and building my own gear -- typically QRP radios and accessories like my homemade solid brass bug shown above and featured in the August 2008 Short Takes column in QST. Then there's the mobile rig, a Yaesu FT-757GXII along with the matching tuner and a whole set of roof mount Hustler vertical radiators. The car looks like a porcupine or hedgehog at times! Usually I can be found on the bands chasing DX with the home stations, which are either an ICOM 767 Pro II or a Yaesu FT 857 Earth Station to work HF to the satellites. Then, there's working CW with 2w from my SW+ radios, my Elecraft KX-1 or a RockMite  into a Buddipole antenna. The HF rigs are all set up with music professional quality mixer boards like a Behringer and aW2IYH EQ Plus system, FM studio quality mics such as high end Shure or Stennheiser all improve the audio quality. I've got the capabilities here from 160 meters all the way to 2.4Ghz running the satellite passes. The photos above are from my old web page, (See this information also at http://wadsworthsales.com/polyphaser.aspx) which highlighted proper grounding against lightning. (Ask me how I learned these techniques and why!) The top left photo is the top of the tower ( with the tower folded over). The coax cable shields are grounded there. The next photo to the right is the base of the tower, same method of coax grounding used, note the use of stainless steel to copper, stainless to the galvanized tower and the use of 2" or 3" copper strapping. This same strapping extends to ALL ground rods and ground points of other antennas and to the electrical service panel ground so that ALL are connected together to form a common ground system. The next picture is the entrance panel BEFORE those coax cables enter the house. 1/4" copper plate on standoff insulators, again the coax shield grounds and copper straps direct to ground rods. The final picture shows the INSIDE panel with PolyPhaser system components to ground the coax lines, rotor control cables, low pass filter, and a separate line on the copper buss bar and plate from each piece of equipment to avoid ground loops. That inner plate is a direct connect with copper strap to the outside 1/4" copper plate and straps.

73, de KC9CS Bill See you on the DX bands and QRP calling frequencies!

QRP ARCI #4112 10-10 #66439 Flying Pig QRP #1923 NAQCC North American QRP CW CLUB #2282

SKCC # 4349