Hello from "BILL" KØAWU EN37ed, located in "The Lake Country of Northern Minnesota".
I have been at this QTH, on the shores of Lake Pokegama, for 39 years. I am most active on 50mhz, 144mhz, 222mhz, 432mhz, 902mhz, 1296mhz and 10Ghz weak signal modes. VHF and UHF has been my main amateur radio interest over 58 years. I have VUCC on 6, 2 meters, 432Mhz and WAS on 6 and 2 meters. If you find me on HF, I will be "ragchewing", chasing a bit of DX or perhaps playing around with JT65, something I normally do on 2m EME. It is all fun and has been for me since April 1955.
1955
10GHz -K0AWU/R
Gear from "yesterday"
KØAWU Web Pages ::http://www.qth.net/k0awu/
As you read this, I hope it brings back many good memories of an earlier time in this wonderful hobby. I first became interested in Amateur Radio after hearing a Boy's Life story read after lunch in grade school at Napton, Missouri. This was in the spring of 1954. Kids, spies and Amateur Radio used to "bust" the bad guys. The story was titled "Standby For Danger". (In Sept 2008 I obtained a copy from the BSA of that story that "started it all" 57yrs ago.) I discovered that the family radio covered shortwave and the amateur bands, at least through 20 meters, were well marked. What great memories setting on the floor in front of the old radio listening to the conversations from places far away from rural Missouri. At that point I had never been over 150 miles from our dairy farm home. Trying to learn the code, speaking dots and dashes, "sending" with a table knife on the kitchen table. On my second attempt at the Novice test, I received my license on 4/8/1955. My first station was a Hallicrafters S-53A Receiver (purchased from the Sears & Roebuck catalog), either a Ameco AC-1 or Philmore NT-200 CW xmtr built up from a kit and a off center feed longwire. I later upgraded to a Heath AT-1, a homebrew antenna tuner and a Windom antenna fed with 300ohm twinlead. An improvement in both transmitter and antenna.
Contacts were few and far between,poor receiver selectivity, poor antenna matching and poor cw skills made a good contact unusual, but VERY memorable. 80 meters at night and weekends was the only operation time available. QRM! or no signals.
After my novice years, many decades of VHF/UHF weak signal fun. Now you may even catch me on HF from time to time, I enjoy 160m and 75m AM (or SSB) ragchewing as well as chasing a bit of SSB DX with 100watts and dipoles on 20, 15 or 12m. QRP CW qsos on 40m is great running 500mw with a SoftRock SDR or the K3/10. In Jan 2013 I have started playing with JT65-HF to try to get me through the long winter. Many 1,000s of JT QSOs on VHF now time to try "Joe's modes" on HF. I run mostly 15w and dipoles for this mode.
CU on the bands. 73 Bill K0AWU
Difficult VHF paths on headings that are west of N/S.
Most of my VHF/UHF/Microwave activity is towards the "Twin Cities" , down the Mississippi, and in that direction the path is quite good.
