Amateur Radio Station

WS2L

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Hello to all, my name is Dave (WS2L) and this is my tiny little place on the World Wide Web where I get to babble a little about one of my favorite hobbies: HAM RADIO.

My beginnings in Ham Radio and Electronics began when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I was always building some types of antenna’s to get more range out of my C.B. walkie Talkie. Eventually my parent’s bought me a 23 channel base station with a ground plane antenna and the experimenting just never stopped, I was always digging around and trying to make my systems work better in one shape or form. When I was about 12 or 13 I was introduced to Ham Radio by a good friend of mine Chris (WA2ZDY) and Gary (No longer licensed). I remember going to Gary’s shack with Chris and I heard SSB for the first time, at the time Gary had a nice mint Collins S-Line……I was both impressed and hooked at the same time. Over the next few months I studied the Morse code and the Novice Class exam manual, on March 31, 1978 I was issued my Novice Class callsign “WD2AHD”.

I have always enjoyed CW as a primary means of making QSO’s over the years and when I was issued my first license Novices did not have any voice privileges and at that time if you did NOT upgrade your license to at least Technician Class you would lose your license. Shortly after receiving my Novice Ticket the FCC changed the rules regarding upgrading within two years, Novice licenses were now renewable and you could stay a Novice forever if you wished. So the big day comes, I have my Ticket in hand, an HF transceiver and a multiband dipole hanging from the roof, now I’m ready to make my very first CW contact. Ok, I have to admit that 80 meter CW during the middle of the day will not give you a contact half way around the world but I figured it was a good place to start. So there I sit with my straight key calling CQ on 80 CW, much to my surprise I received an answer to my very first CQ, turns out my first contact was with a gentleman who was 3 towns away from my QTH at that time. So much for DX : )

I remained a Novice from 1978 until 1985 when I started to get interested in VHF/UHF FM repeaters; I had a handful of the local ones programmed into my scanner to listen to. I upgraded to Technician Class around September 1985 and was quickly hooked on 2 meter FM, keeping in touch with friends and making new friends on the local repeaters. At about the same time I decided to dust off the HF radio and started getting back on HF while enjoying the 2-meter band. I started to listen around the phone bands and decided to get my code speed up (13 wpm) to pass the code and theory for the General Class license. Once I received the General ticket I decided to buy a new HF rig, I purchased a Kenwood TS-530S and put up a new series of wire antenna’s for the bands I was interested in working. During mid 1986 I upgraded to Advanced and the following month to Extra Class where I started working a lot of CW and started chasing after different awards. I currently hold Worked All States (WAS), Worked All Continents (WAC) and the DX Century Club (DXCC) with 256 countries confirmed. In 1989 I decided to change my callsign to my current (WS2L) call before the 2^nd call district ran out of 2x1 callsigns. During this time I had also become an avid contester and had a unique problem, many stations would misinterpreted my WD2 prefix as a WB2, after a while it started to become a bit aggravating to repeat my call so many times during a contest. The new callsign pretty much solved that problem and I found it to be a much more “User Friendly” on CW.

I had always kept my callsign up to date even during the times when I would not touch a radio for months or even a few years at a time. It is always easier to keep your license valid during these times than to let it lapse to the point where you have to re-test in order to get back on the bands. This actually became helpful for a friend who became a Ham Radio operator after he his family had moved across country when we were like 16 years old. My good friend Al (K1ALH) was able to look me up on QRZ.com and my email address was listed, this was in 1998. Ever since Field Day 1999 I travel to Nashua, New Hampshire to see my good friend for the weekend and to play radio on 40 meter SSB with the Nashua Area Radio Club (N1FD), this trip renewed my interest in Ham Radio and I have years of wonderful memories of the Field Days we operate together.

Currently my rig is a Kenwood TS-570SG running into an Alpha Delta DX-CC multi band dipole with the apex up about 45 feet. I also have a tri-band vertical at 50 feet for 6 meters, 2 meters, and 70cm. My home VHF/UHF rig is a Kenwood TM-731A, which I use mostly for my Echolink 2 meter Link (WS2L-L #133593) that operates on 146.550 MHz or 52.525 MHz depending on band conditions.

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