Sunday, February 22, 2009

The many phase of Amateur Radio



I am David, KU9L. I was first licensed with call sign KA9EDP in 1979. My wife Sheila is KB9YYI. Our current phase of life has us operating as /P or /M 100% of the time. We are new full-time RV'ers traveling and working across the USA. I've always been passionate about working CW and weak signal VHF so it is no wonder why my ham radio activities work so well around operating portable QRP. Our current commercial rigs are only a couple of Yaesu VX-1R HT's that we use for family communications. I've always enjoyed building electronic projects all the way back to my Novice days when I built my first 250 mw rock-bound rig as a project in college. I've built a half-dozen Heathkits throughout my early ham radio years. As my 18+ year career in aerospace electronics progressed my ham radio activities crawled to a halt. I did build a Small Wonders Labs SW-40 cw transceiver in 2005 which is currently in our storage unit in Iowa along with many of my tools. We closed on the sale of our Colorado house late in the fall which stressed our ability to get everything into storage AND to make it to our winter workamping session in Florida in a timely manner. Shortly I'll document a few HF QRPp rigs I will be building from kits very soon.