Greetings, we must have worked on HF or UHF/VHF recently.  

I'm a programmer by trade and have been around punched cards and reel-reel tapes (6250bpi) :-) ... Been involved in system admin and programming since early 80's - -it's been fun working on different technologies over the years.  Having received my ham radio licence (VE6DRK Basic and Advanced) in Calgary the year when my son was born was fun.  He's now joined the hobby a year or so ago. :-)   After moving to VE4-land, I picked up my 5wpm code.   I've worked mostly digital in my early ham life, Working IP over AX25 via satellite to remote gateways was always fun -- discussing networking protocols and dissecting bit streams was always fun to experiment with.  I still keep abreast of the digital components of our hobby - but not as much as I'd like to -- there's always a facet of radio which intrigues me :-)  I've had quite a dry-spell where I wasn't involved, and got back involved around 2012.  Our national organisation was looking for some specific technical help on their servers/etc.  I'm also involved with the regional repeater group, local groups etc.  I'm also a relative n00b when it comes to DX and contesting - I do enjoy the sport and am involved with the local DX/radiosport group.  I just hope to get a better station setup to more actively participate in the hobby more effectively.  I run various 2m nets on occasion and support various groups.  I've learned lots from all the people I've worked with and enjoy talking to the people I meet on the air.  If only my day job didn't get in the way of my real work - radio - I'd be a happier ham HI HI

Some specs on my setup: (see my blog for my story). http://ve4drk.keizer.ca

 

Licenced since 1991.

Basic+Advanced+5WPM. Getting back into more radio.

 

HF setup:

Primary rig: Kenwood TS590S

Secondary rig: Kenwood TS-450Sat

Tertiary rig: FT-101E

Yaesu FT726R tri-band multi-mode

Hy-Gain 18-AVT vertical is ground mounted in the back yard.

Cushcraft R5 vertical - 5 band antenna

Alpha-Delta DX-LB-Plus 10m-160m dipole - great antenna

3 element 6meter cushcraft beam

ARX-2 2m Ringo,

Home-made 10m dipole in attic.

Home-made double-extended copper j-pole for 2m/70cm

 

Member of:

RAC- Radio Amateurs of Canada   http://rac.ca

MRS - Manitoba Repeater Society http://www.mb-repeater-society.ca/

WARC - Winnipeg Amateur Radio Club -http://winnipegarc.org/

MARM - Manitoba Amateur Radio Museum + Life Member -http://marminc.ca/

RSMB - Radiosport Manitoba + Secretary - http://radiosport.ca  (new home)

ARRL - American Radio Relay League - http://www.arrl.org

WDR - Winnipeg Digital Repeater Group + membership chair - http://www.ve4wdr.org/

VA4WAN - our burgeoning high-speed network!  http://va4wan.ampr.org/ 

Small blog started at http://ve4drk.keizer.ca

 

Other radios:

Kenwood TM700 - radio in the car

ICOM 2720 mobile - radio in the shack

Yaesu FT-1500mobile - radio in the shack

Icom IC22A (yes, it works well!) sitting on the shelf at the moment

ADi-600

Baofeng UV5R, UV82, BF888's

Sainsonic AP510 APRS tracker,

 

Ubiquity 2.3GHz Radio - High Speed Data.

Ubiquity 3.3 GHz Radio - High Speed Data

Icom IC31A D-Star

Connect Systems 750 DMR

Various MicroTik routing components to tie the networks together.

Looking forward to making contacts and exchanging QSL cards.  (I really need to get this organized).

3 element tri-band beam - older TA-33 (man, is it big!), mini-quad (to be worked on)

Various Raspberry Pi's (about 6 or so now) running various utilities such as APRS, SDR decoders, WSPR transmitters, asterisk VoIP systems, a couple of IRLP systems (one I own and one I am current custodian).

Lots of projects to work on - when the time is there.

Have found more digital modes and more bands to play with over the last year.  Looking forward to more 6m activity

2012-12-03: Found this nice old video of ham radio from VA3QV's blog -- had to share it : http://www.cqdx.ru/ham/ham_radio/ham-radio-before-the-internet/

 

2013-12-16: Trying out this counter ..

2017-01-05: Trying out something different ...