Just a little bit of personal info about me. I was born in Elliot Lake, Ontario on 01 January of 1959 to Wil and Geri Donohue. I am the oldest of 2 sons. After a period of 4 years in Elliot Lake we moved out west to Saskatchewan, where most of my childhood was spent in Saskatoon. I was quite active in sports namely baseball and like every young Canadian boy, played hockey during the Winter months.

I joined the Military at the age of 19 and after I completed Basic Training, I spent time in Kingston, Ontario and then headed out west to Calgary, Alberta. From there, I was Posted to Lahr, West Germany. I spent 6 great years in Lahr where I met my lovely wife Birgit. We then moved back to Canada, to Calgary, Alberta where we spent 4 years and then once again headed back overseas, this time to Brunssum, The Netherlands where we lived for a period of almost 4 years. We then once again returned to Canada, this time to Petawawa, Ontario and this has been our home since 1994. We have 2 daughters, Melanie and Jennifer, and a total of 4 Grandchildren, who all live only a stones throw away (just 15km) in Pembroke. I have been most fortunate to have served on a number of 6-7 Month Tours overseas, namely 3 Tours in Bosnia, 1 Tour in Kosovo and just recently completed my 2nd Tour of Afghanistan where we spent the entire tour living in trenches and makeshift accommodations while being under a constant high state of readiness. My last serving unit prior to retirement was with 2 ASG in Petawawa, which was a great break from the hectic field life.

As of 16 September 2013, I am now retired. Now I have more time to spend on the radio and achieve some of my goals, mainly "#1 Honor Roll".

One of my interests are Weather, which all started upon returning from my Bosnia Tour in 1994, I purchased a Davis Vantage Pro Weather Station. It sat as a standalone station until January 1997, when I purchased the Davis Datalogger and Davis Weatherlink software. This allowed me to interface the Weather Station with my personal computer. At that time I started uploading Weather Data to various Internet sites, mainly Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) and started keeping records of the Weather Station until some fellow Amateurs told me I could do so much more. With their help, I created my own Website. This website really helped me hone my computer/internet skills. In 2010, I obtained my own domain (VE3YF) and moved everything over to the newly created website. The Davis Vantage Pro Weather Station has served me very well since 1994. My next project will be to interface the Weather Station with my Towers Rotor, thus enabling the rotor to turn into the wind during high winds, all being done automatically, great for when I am away from home, I also have recently upgraded the Weather Station and now have Davis Vantage Pro 2 Plus and Davis Vantage Vue stations with loads of extra sensors.

My other hobbies are playing with Computers/Internet and Amateur Radio. I try to combine both hobbies into one whenever possible. Most evenings I can be found downstairs in the shack on the radio. My love is being on HF and I enjoy SSB Ragchewing and Roundtable Nets and also I am quite fond of working RTTY. I am not much into the other modes but from time to time I will experiment. I am still striving to get my CW back up to a respectable speed with the old Iambic keyer. I enjoy working Contests in both SSB/CW and RTTY modes, whenever I can find the time which as of late, due to family commitments and an overabundance of oversea's tours has been pretty sparse.

I currently hold the following:

• - WAC, WAS and WAZ (Phone).
• - Worked all RAC Stations Award.
• - ARRL DXCC Mixed Confirmed at 338 Entities.
• - ARRL DXCC Phone Confirmed at 338 Entities.
• - ARRL DXCC Mixed Honor Roll.
• - ARRL DXCC Phone Honor Roll.
• - Various Minor Contest Wallpaper and Awards.

Currently the working conditions at the home QTH are 2 x Elecraft K3 Transceivers, 2 x Elecraft P3 Panadapters,  and a Elecraft KPA500 Amp and Elecraft KAT500 Tuner, Also at my disposal, are an ETO Alpha 86 and Alpha Power 91ß Linear Amps which are fed into a Mosley Pro-67B Beam, a 80m Double Bazooka in the Inverted V configuration. I use an 1/4 wave sloper for 160m. For 6m I use a M2 Inc 6M5XHP. As a Backup/Multiplier antenna I use a Hustler 9-BTV vertical with 50 Radials laid down.

Back By Popular Request:

This is a revised version from memory. Today I was asked what happened to my rant about 73.

I hear on the Phone portion of the bands, the operators signing with 73's.  The operators in the CW portion of the bands sign with 73, so who is correct. Actually the CW operators who are signing with 73 are correct. First the Phone operators that sign with 73's are sadly mistaken.

There is no such thing as 73's, and it doesn't make any sense to say 73's.

All it does, is tell me that if you are signing your QSO with 73, then you are a true CW operator.

Operators that sign  with 73's obviously do not know CW. Unfortunately are the days gone bye when you needed to know CW to get your license. Now we have people trying to copy old CW signals and still not getting it right. For all you so called Phone Operators the correct saying is 73. Just look up the history of 73 and you will see what I am talking about.

So in future don't make a fool of yourself, say 73..... Need I say anymore.

Just for reference, you can look it up at the following sites or just do a google search for "What does the number 73 mean"

http://www.signalharbor.com/73.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code

And for those of you who think that CW is dead, old Cold War technology, enlighten yourself to the CW portions of the bands most weekends as they are jam packed with CW...

Boatanchor Operating Position

Main Operating Position (SO2R Contest Station)

55' Crankup Tower and Antennae

Backup/Multiplier Antenna

Low Bands Receiving Loop

Weather Stations

ARRL DXCC Honor Roll Plaques