I was born in New Orleans, and grew up in Terrytown, just outside the city. I'm married and have four children, 14 yo dtr, 10 yo son, 8 yo dtr., and a newborn son. since I'm in school, and taking classes at Delgado online, I'm able to stay at home with the kids and save on daycare/summer camp. And not to mention, I get to watch our newest addition grow and change every day, yes, I'm Mr. Mom, and I'm loving every minute of it. Doing this now makes me a little sad because now I see all the things I missed with the other 3. And being in school also gives me more time to play with the radio.

I got interested in Amateur Radio back in 1984(the world fair was in Nola that year), but didn't actually get my license until late October 2002. In 1994 it started with a scanner, where I found some ham frequencies, which led me to buy a shortwave receiver so I could listen to the HF freqs the scanner didn't pick up, and I can remember wanting to add my 2 cents in many times. I always knew about ham radio (thanks to my neighbor WA5ORS-SK) but never had the bug until I bought the scanner.

Some other hobbies besides hamming: astronomy, target shooting, fishing, camping, family bike rides, festivals, darts (both steel tip and soft tip).

I'm itchin' to getting into building different things for my shack. It's going to take a while too because of my limited budget. But I plan on building what I can to save money. Right now I have a kenwood TM-271 2m with a homebrew j-pole about 45' up in my tree. And that's it (thanks Katrina). My next project is a beam antenna, because I figure if I'm stuck with either VHF or echolink, I might as well make the most of it.

Here's my beam, it's called the Bobtail beam, or according to Mike (K5HUM) the HayFork antenna. Supposedly, when the 2m band is bad, I can hook this baby to my lawn tractor and rake the yard.

73 Scott