Hmmm... Lets start with what you would get from the ARRL Call
Sign search system.
Ehresman JR, Robert L, KV4PC
121 Tidewater Drive
Madison, AL 357589414
Licensee ID: L01800039
License Class: Extra
FRN: 0022823686
Radio Service: HA
Issue Date: 07/08/2013
Expire Date: 07/08/2023
Date of Last Change: 07/08/2013 (New Systematic Call Sign Assigned)
And it would perhaps be useful to see my Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/robert.ehresman.9
A little personal history...
I became a radio amateur when I received my novice license at age 13 in 1974 - WN4JOM. I upgraded
to Tech class the year after that - WA4JOM, and never managed to hold up my speed at Morse code
long enough to upgrade to General. In about 2001, with many other distractions; the internet, work,
cellular telephone I let my license lapse. A suppose I got a kick in the pants when my father, WB4JWX
became a silent key. I thought about him, and his love of the hobby and a bit less than a year after
he passed I went and took all the exams. My mother is still licensed (WB4IPM) but has been inactive
for a very long time.
As
I kid in highschool in Morristown TN I was locally active on 2 meters
"Fun Mode", and helped my father run the Lakeway Amateur Radio Club
simplex net. I bought a Swan 250, and a 4 element yagi (couldnt afford
a rotor) and worked 6 meter SSB for several years. This was
during the rise to solar max of sunspot cycle 21. I worked sporatic E
and a little aurora and probably worked around 40 states, and a hand
full of countries in North America. I got involved in the Six Meter
International Radio Klub (SMIRK), holding SMIRK # 1859 (I guess
theoretically I still do). I remember many an evening listening to the
hiss of
my Swan receiver, many evenings with nothing. Some the band would
abruptly come alive with dozens or even hundreds of stations. Glorious
evenings when I would have to call one of my parents or my sister in to
help me log my contacts because there were so many opportunities -
often I was the subject of a pile up because of the power advantage of
the Swan. I pointed my bean by armstrong method. There was a
ladder to the
roof of the house petty much permanently and I would run up on the
roof
and swing it, while listening to the rig singing through my bedroom
window to peak up on signals. I remember many a summer evening chatting
with Andy, VE1ASJ in Nova Scotia. Some fluke of propagation connected
Tennessee and Nova Scotia many evenings when there was nothing
apparently happening anywhere else on the band. The Swan 250 was, in
that time, the ruler of the band.
They were usually the first rig heard when the band was opening up and
often Swan owners enjoyed an extra half hour or more when the band
closed down for those that had lesser shoes. I went to area hamfests
such as Knoxville and Johnson City, and particiapted in a couple of
field days.
I
went to college at Tennessee Tech in 1978 and eventually joined TTARS.
In college I experienced everything Amateur Radio had to offer at the
time. Operating as WA4UCE with one of the higher level licenses as
control I learned my way around HF operations in spite of my Tech class
license. That was when Amateur Packet Radio was in its infancy (still
is in my professional opinion) and those networks were beginning to
build out. I made a Bell 202 modem clone for my Commodore 64 computer
so I could run the infamous Digicomm 64 packet software - probably the
first example of TNC-less packet radio. I had alot of adventures in
those days, trips to the Smokey Mountains to work the VHF Sweepstakes,
made lots of friends in the local area, participated in ARES, put beam
antennas on cars to do Foxhunts, and worked several Field Days. I met
my wife there and she got licensed as N4RXB (she lapsed when I did and
has no real interest in re-upping). In those days, a $29 dollar Radio
Shack 49 MHz walkie talkie adapted to 52.525 with a replacement crystal
was our "cellular telephone system" for many Tech students because the
Tech WA4UCE 2m repeater had a 6m remote base scabbed on to it .
Even though I had a nice synthesized Icom HT, it often stayed at
home because the little rockbound toy was so small and simple and met
my everyday needs. They were A-OK into the repeater all over campus and
for several blocks around the perimeter. Further out, if you could see
the Chemical Engineering Building (Prescott Hall) then you could work
the repeater. Amateur Radio informed and inspired my studies in
Electrical Engineering, and led me into graduate studies of
multidimensional signal processing. While at Tech, I made many visits
to the Cedars Of Lebanon Hamfest. And one trip to the Dayton Hamvention
wherein a group of us went up early and visited the museum of flight at
Wright-Pat AFB, and spent several days there walking out the Hamfest
Fleamarket.
My wife and I moved to Huntsville AL to take
jobs in the aerospace industry here. Her family lives in Cookeville TN
where we went to school and mine lives in Morristown TN. Somehow
we never got "socialized" into the local amateur radio community of
Huntsville. Somehow, between work, parenting, soccer, living in
covenant-restricted homes I never built up that hamshack I always
wanted. We attended the Huntsville Hamfest because many old friends
from Tennessee would come there, and we got the HTs out for trips back
home to call folk we knew. But eventually we just... didnt anymore.
Internet and cellular telephone made all that too easy. And these days
with different standards of behavior, I must say I dont enjoy the funny
looks I get in public when someone breaks the squelch on my"carry"
radio (Where is Bluethooth in amateur radio??).
So now I
am back. I took all the tests the same day and passed them. The CAVEC
guys said I was the first hat trick they had seen in a long time. Im an
Extra Class now. I have a new fancy 2x2 callsign. I can go anywhere, do
anything that I ham can do. Let's find out if it will be different this
time.
To start out I have been checking in to local 2m
nets. I have joined my corporate auxillery communications service,
attended one ARES meeting and turned in my paperwork there. I have made
my presence regularly known on APRS. I have connected with a number of
folks in my work environment that are hams. So far I am rig-poor,
having just a cheap chinese Baofeng radio. However cheap it may be, its
my first dual band HT ever - those were vastly expensive things back in
the day. I have an RTL-SDR receiver stick I use to scan around and to
listen to my own packet signal. And I have worked out a soundcard
packet radio interface for it. So I can get on APRS by radio should the
need arise, though I generally prefer to use my smartphone to APRS-IS.
I have not explored other aspects of local Packet radio as yet, but I
will be in the near future. I plan to get a Genesis Radio G11 kit to
build soon to get on HF and enjoy Software Defined Radio. One of the
things I worked on in grad school was a pre-soundcard digital I/F for
HF idea. Anyway, I have plans...