Ham Radio

Long Montana winters and Ham Radio go well together. A good place to be when the temp is below zero is next to a nice warm radio amplifier. The coldest I have encountered here in North-central Montana was a brisk - 64 Fahrenheit. Yes, that's me clinging to the tower (top left). I leave fingerprints in metal when higher than about 20 feet. Any higher, and I am definitely BUZZARD BAIT !!

My primary interest is working DX, the countries and islands around the world. I put the tower up (even mixed my own concrete by hand) in 1990, and mounted on it a Mosley 67 antenna. Soon after, to my surprise, I worked a station in Turkey. Others quickly followed and at present, have worked 337 DXCC countries as defined by the ARRL, using a Yeasu 767. Recently, I added an amplifier to the radio station. Perhaps some day, I will work the last two countries left for a clean sweep on Single Side Band.

One morning, when the frost was about an inch thick on everything, I took this photo. The antenna is at a height of 62 feet and on a Hazer unit to raise and lower it. The antenna is 42 feet wide and covers 10 through 40 meters. The curved wire sloping down to the right is the 80 m wire, and the vertical spike on top is a 2 meter antenna. Winds in the area can exceed 100 mph so the tower is guyed at three levels. When the frost is really heavy, the longest element of the antenna, the one with the "X" on each tip, will droop down at 45 degrees on each end.

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Hams trade cards around the world, just for the fun of it, and also to qualify for various awards such as the Honor Roll above. This is my latest card. The reverse side is filled in with all the contact information. The photo was taken with a normal lens at about 18 inches, with a nice piece of freshly cleaned (thick!) glass between us.

You will often find me near the frequency 14.236 at 2330 Zulu time each evening with the INDEXA (International DX Association) session. This group begins with a brief summary of interesting DX stations operating, or scheduled to operate, along with other Ham Radio news. Then the staff is available to help with getting QSL or other information about rare stations operating around the world.

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Along about 1994, with goals running short, as you can see the dates on the plaques above, I started looking for other interesting facets associated with Ham Radio. A friend searched the internet and found absolutely nothing on ham radio clipart. I was also encouraged to develop something to help the various ham radio newsletter editors around the country. I began the task in earnest and by 1995 had enough of images like the ones above and below to fill a disk. The tower shown to the left was one of my early ones. Since then, I have made two more discs full of clipart and on occasion, add a new one to the fourth disk now under construction. Now, there are oodles of sites of various types of radio clipart. Below are a few of the type I like to made.