I've been around amateur radio since about 1970 when I was intrduced to a wheelchair bound local Navy MARS operator who had muscular dystrophy. Over the next 5 years I pushed him all over town, often 5 mile trips in winter, learned to fix kleinschmidt and ASR-33 teletypes and R-390As. But only if the fixes were easy!

While at college in 1977 I picked up my technician class license. Had a ball at our college station: K2GXT operating VHF and HF contests.

Since then I've been on again/off again. After building my 1st computer, a 4MHz Z80 CPM machine called "Ferguson's Big Board, I built  TAPR TNC I and II and was active on that network. Did some satellite work just to say I could do it, and did a bit of VHF contest and HF ragchewing.

Now that the kids are out and I have more time, I'm running mainly digital modes on HF and getting ready to begin VHF/UHF contesting again.

Radios active now are:

Icom 576PRO - primary HF radio

Icom 745 - older HF backup

Icom 275H - 2 meters multimode

Icom 471 - 70cm multimode

Icom R7100 receiver

I have a homemade (not by me!) 4-1000 based HF amplifier, an 800W 6 meter and 800W 2 meter amplifier that I'm just getting going

In addition to radio, I am a very active amateur astronomer with telescopes too numerous to list. They can be seen on my website WWW.CHACHKA.NET

73

Peter                                                

When you see a fork in the road, take it!