Welcome!

I was first licensed in December 27, 2001 as a Technician and have been active ever since. I live in Littleton, Co. in a Condo that prohibits me from hanging antennas out of my windows so I get by with 5 watts out of my FT-817 fed through a homemade 2m ground plane antenna found in a QST article. But, luckily my wife, Melissa realized my love for the hobby and bought me a Yaesu FT 7100M mobile radio for my truck for Valentine’s Day 2002. I currently own several other radios, which can be viewed here. I am happy with my license level for now, but that hasn’t kept me from studying for the General license that will enable me to use HF on 10m – 160m. But I need to learn Morse code to pass the test and that is a little bit frustrating right now. I belong to three organizations as of right now, Arapahoe County D22 ARES group, The Denver Radio League, and the Rocky Mountain Radio League. I am also a member of the ARRL.

ARES, Amateur Radio Emergency Service, is a nation wide organization, broken up into local districts, of Ham Radio operators that donate their time, communication skills, and the use of their equipment anytime supplemental communications are needed. These can include emergencies, parades, sporting events, and local municipalities experiencing outages. Luckily, I have only worked non-emergency communication events, with the exception of training exercises to keep us ready in case we are called to duty. We constantly go through training exercises just about every month. We hold a weekly information net every Sunday morning to pass information and training issues pertinent to the group. ARES groups around the nation have several frequencies that we have to communicate on. Ham radio is very different in the aspect of being able to communicate in times of emergencies. We are not dependant on commercial power or telephone lines. All of our equipment is able to be powered by battery, solar, wind, or even generator. Any source of DC power can run our equipment. For example during the 9/11 disaster, all formal forms of communication were interrupted, i.e. cell phones, landlines, pagers. The only way that any communication was accomplished was by Ham Radio operators putting their life on the lines to let the rest of the world now and the served agencies communicate. Served agencies can include, but are not limited to – Police, Fire, Red Cross, and Salvation Army. Another perfect example of the communications help from Ham Radio operators are after Hurricanes. The first thing that usually happens is commercial power is lost and then followed by conventional telephone landlines. Without Ham Radio operators in times of emergencies, the world would be a far different place. Non-emergency events include the MS-150, March of Dimes, Leukemia walk-a-thon, and Destination Imagination.

I am married to a wonderful woman, Melissa. We have been together for 6 years and married for over two years. My son Alexander Lee Shenton was born on February 19, 2004. You can see pictures of him here. I am very happy and exhausted at the same time. I am hoping that I can do as good as a job as my father did. I have a baby girl, Mackenzie Serise Shenton, be born on March 23, 2006 by C-section. When I have pictures, I will post them on her own page.

73

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Last updated:

January 17, 2007