Welcome to
VE3LNY's Web Site
My
name is
Jack Botner and my amateur radio callsign is VE3LNY.
The photo shows me installing my 6 meter yagi antenna.
I have been licensed since 1979 and have been operating out of various locations in the Toronto area. Professonally, I am a computer programmer and recently retired from a large financial institution. My specialty is applied cryptography.
My station consists primarily of an ICOM 746 and I operate on HF and VHF. (I also have an IC-208H mobile and IC-T7A handheld.) Since I live on a small city lot, there isn't enough space for antennas. On HF I use a G5RV dipole for 80, 40 and 17 meters, a trap dipole for 12 and 30 meters, and a 1/4 wave vertical on my roof for 10, 15 and 20 meters. My tower is a 40 foot TV tower, with a 3 element 6 meter yagi and a 6 element 2 meter yagi (both horizontal) on a TV rotator. I also have a home-built J-Pole for local and repeater operation on 2 meters. I must have lucked out with the G5RV, because it loads up on 40, 20, and 17 meters without a tuner.
Since I acquired my 746, I have been active on 6 and 2 meter DX. 6 meters is a particularly fascinating band, and I was very fortunate to catch the sunspot cycle peak in 2001 to work a lot of DX. (N4UFP has an excellent presentation on 6 meter propogation at the ARRL SC web site, click on Technical Presentations by N4UFP). I also enjoy working aurora and tropo-ducting on VHF.
Free Programs
Over the years I have developed many computer programs. You can download some of these from my Download Page.
My Weather Station
One of my recent interests has been to set up my own Weather Station. I have an AAG Electronica 1-Wire Wind Instrument. Find out more about this on my Weather Station Page.
Satellites
Since
I
retired I have become involved in an
interest group called the Satellites. We meet once a week and talk
about various ham radio and computer topics. You can find the Satellites web site
here.
A number of the Satellites are also involved in various Distributed
Computing projects, including the Einstein@home and
Rosetta@home projects. For more information on these and other Distributed Computing projects, see
the Satellites
Distributed Computing page.
PIC Projects
Thanks to AmQRP I have learned how to program PICs, which are small, inexpensive programmable microcontrollers from Microchip Technology Inc. Click here for my Pic Projects page.
AVR Projects
The AVR series of microcontrollers, from Atmel Corporation are similar to PICs. Click here for my AVR Projects page.
Other Electronics Projects
Power Controller, Battery Charger, Audio Amplifier.
