Born, raised & lived in Louisiana until June 2007. Got my novice in 1957 as KN5JFO.being a kid of about 9-10 years old, that call lapsed since I was about 6 months late taking the General (in New Orleans FCC office), so I had the call WA5LTH for many yearsoperated thru the early '70s then put ham radio aside for some 40 years for other interests (motorcycles, sports cars, boats, fishing, flying, aerobatic flying, and a few more!).finally got the original call, K5JFO,back as a 'Vanity" a few years ago! It was recently replaced with N5FO for better CW weighting in contests & DXing.

The Wife & I were full time RVers, since June 2007 for more details on us and our adventures, be sure to visit our Blogsite at: http://adventures-kim-sam.blogspot.com/

I got back into ham radio as we became RVers, at the suggestion of a friend, I bought a Yaesu FT-817ND in 2007.had lots of fun with the 5 watts, and a throw-up dipole. Several adventures of remote paddling & backpacking operating portable are documented on the Blog. In 2009 I upgraded the RVing rig to an FT-450,a great little radio for out on the road.

Early 2011, I got a new Kenwood TS-590, and the Ameritron ALS-500 amp for use RVing with my Hustler 5BTV Vertical. We spent about 5 months on the road this year, and I operated this combination from the trailer quite a bit. And now more recently, I've added an Ameritron AL-1500 amp for home use. Antennas now are a 160M 600ohm ladderline fed dipole, with an MFJ-998 Intellituner, a CushCraft R8 Vertical, and the latest additionthe bigOptiBeam 16-3 Tribander!

When out RVing,the rig operates strictly on battery power, by solar panels on top of the trailer. These pix are of the new 590 & ALS-500 setup in the trailer earlier this year.

We operated several months of last year, and for the rest of this year here at our newly purchased home west of Silver City, New Mexico (DM52sq).

The pole and antennas you see are our TV antenna, and a ladderline fed dipole, and in the back a 2M vertical.

(To learn more about how we found this QTH and see pix go to the bloglink above, when the calendar appears on the left side, click on "2009" then click on "December").

The "shack" has a fabulous view of the "Little Burro" Mountains, part of the Gila National Forest.

The QTH is at 5800ft elevation which helps!

A NEW 160M dipole is at the top of the ridge that is to the right of the cabin, which ADDS 130 feet EXTRA VERTICAL HEIGHT, and has an almost 360 degree unobstructed view

Here's the big dipole photo'd looking eastward

Here are pictures from uptop the ridge, looking North:

Now Looking East:

Looking South:

Looking West is the only direction that has a hill out there about a half mile, but the angle above the horizon is very low, maybe4-6 degrees. I'm standing right where I have the center pole for the dipole located now, and the tower & new Optibeam 16-3 will be located slightly behind me.

In addfition to working on the tower and getting ready for the new beam, I just erected this CushCraft R8 Vertical about 60 feet west of the tower. It seems to perform well for DX and stateside when the propogation is short. The pix to the right is the upper half of the almost 400 ft Heliax run through the rugged ridgeside terrain to service the vertical and the beam with a remote coax switch.

Thanks to the help of a couple of locals, Steve & Bob (NM5SD & WA0QJE), we were able to get the first two sections of Rohn up recently.

October 8th, got the 2inch by 18inch deep rock drill in and installed the guy anchors up there!

Working up the ridge is quite an effort, since there is no road or 4-wheeler trail up there!

Finally last week (Nov 9th) with the help of N2IC, NM5SD, WA0QJE and Bruce, a close neighbor,N2IC(on left) & Igot the top sections of the tower in place.

Here's a pix taken from down by the shack some 170ft below, showing the center pole of the 160M dipole on the left, new tower & OptiBeam on the right, with the R8 Vertical to the right of it.

and here's the big OB 16-3  TriBander which is doing a fantastic job!

see you on the air again soon!

Sam