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Callsign History
I received my license in November of 2000 through the Sunnyvale
ARC VEC's in the Bay Area of California, where I
passed Element 1A and Element
2. My first
callsign was KG6ECH. In
May of 2002 I submitted for my first vanity callsign,
which I researched on Vanity
HQ, and thus I'm now known as N6WWW. Now,
the "W" is the only two-syllable letter in
the alphabet, so saying "N6-Double-You-Double-you-Double-You"
really is a mouthful! Now, standard phonetics
dictate I should say something more like "N6-Whiskey-Whiskey-Whiskey",
but my dislike of the taste of whiskey, and my
affinity for the web, brought about the phonetic of,
"N6-World-Wide-Web".
Operating History
Though I received my license in November of 2000, it
wasn't until April of 2001 that I received my first
HT, a Radio Shack
2m HTX-200.
That was all fine and good, but they had just come out
with a new dual-band 2m/70cm, so I traded up pretty
quickly for the HTX-245. All
excited, I put in some AA batteries and fired it up
searching for some fun from my Fremont, CA
apartment! And I scanned... and scanned... and
scanned... and heard a few conversations along the way
but wasn't able to join in to any of them. So I
went to SHARKK
and programmed in a few repeaters that my HT could key
up.... and still no QSO's...
well, eventually I did find someone to chat with for a
minute while on break at work in Mountain View, CA...
and that was it after about 2 weeks of trying. I
was VERY disappointed... and thus the HT made it's way
into a box where it rested for about a year.
Well, in March 2002 I moved to Sacramento,
CA and in unpacking what did I find? That
$250 paper weight! So bored with no Internet,
TV, or Movies (couldn't find the AV cables), I fired
it up and ran across N6SEX's
repeater. They were a silly and zany group of
hams that were fun to listen to! So I, out on my
back porch, "Pressed the Pickle", and
ID'd. Still to this day I have never found a
warmer welcome on any repeater. They were
super! John (N6SEX)
took some time out to show me some IRLP
and connected us to REF925.
There I meat a great set of hams (the one I remember
the best was Fred, VE6MOM).
We had great fun until the wee hours of the
morning. I was finally starting to see why ham
radio was fun! From there
I bought a mag-mount for my HT, and am still
having fun learning. The hope is that once
resources permit, to build a 40m QRP transceiver and
stretch my legs with some of that CW
I spent time learning! I learned CW
really easily and fast using a program called Ham
University. I also found out later that NuMorse
was a good program (and more flexible, though less intuitive
to use).
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