Welcome
Please see my Communication Interoperability and PacketRadio pages! More soon!
My current activity is around HSMMMesh . See http://hsmm-mesh.org/ for the details and my page for my own notes.
Ham radio has been an interest of mine since my early teens. I took a Novice class in the late 70's iirc, took and passed the written and code tests, but never heard back from the ham doing the class with regards to getting my ticket. After moving back to my native area, in the Adirondack State Park of New York, I decided that I need a winter hobby to help retain some sanity, the dial-up internet access wasn't quite doing it. I found a session at the Saratoga Club's Ham Fest in 2007, where I got my Technician ticket and upgraded to General on March 15th, 2008
I'm kinda studying to take the Extra exam on 11 Sept, 2010 at the Saratoga County Club Ham Fest, 3 years after getting my Tech ticket.
I have quite an eclectic technical background, from BBSs in the 1990s, an early adopter of the internet and computer technology in general. I have a basic knowledge of analog and digital electronics. Dad did TV, CB, and other electronics repair when I was a youngster. The Air Force gave me several more skills, as did some community college courses. I tend to do more internet-based tech these days.
My gear consists of a Yaesu FT-8800, with a KB2X-built stainless steel J-pole and a home-made (thx to B2ZSP for the gamma match) 5-element 2m yagi for the QTH. The portable rig is a Fiedaxin FD-150A 2m that I hook up to a Diamond MR77 mobile magmount when in the car. When not mobile, I use it for APRS connected to my Kantronics PC3+. I can't hit much with it from the QTH, but is great for events. I also have a RS DX-398 SW radio available for my SWL listening (and HF digital decoding) pleasure.
I had been using an IC706MkIIg, Astron RS-35A power supply, and MFJ-962c antenna tuner all graciously on loan from the Saratoga club till it got returned after field day 2010. It was connected to a home-made fan dipole cut for 10, 20, 40, and 80m. I have worked some DX, but really enjoyed using it for digital modes (mostly 20m and 40m PSK31) with my Buxcomm Rascal sound card interface. I also try to participate in the NYS SEMO net on 3.9935 every Sunday morning at 9am. I have been net control for the state net twice so far.
I'm currently in the market for another HF rig that I can pay-off on-time. I recently sold a vehicle on-time, and can use most of the payments from it.
I am a member of the Saratoga County RACES Association, K2DLL, and volunteer for community service events as often as possible. I scan the club's linked repeaters thru the 147.240 machine at Lake Nancy.
Warren County has a radio club that I'm the secretary and web admin of. Our website is at http://w2wcr.org/. I am also a member of the Warren County RACES Net and monitor the linked repeaters on Prospect Mt. and Gore Mt., on 146.730 & 147.135 respectively. Other repeaters I scan and can hit include 145.390 on Mt. Equinox, and K2AE on 147.060. There a several others that I can hit, but those are very active and can usually be hunted down thru them.
My current exploration path is taking me to building a packet bbs/digipeater, satellite comms, and building 2/440cm and 6m antennas for the QTH. I tend to have daily QSOs with N2QFD via APRS, he's within simplex range, and we're both anxiously waiting for a closer digipeater to use real packet. An old Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDT is currently running Damn Small Linux with ax.25 and userspace soundmodem support, along with F6FBB BBS. My Kantronics PC3+ is currently being used for APRS, for some reason. As of mid Aug 2010, I'm still poking at the configuration of the ax.25 stack, telnet, and the fbb daemon.
The local echolink node is 462972, on the K2DLL repeaters, which are in my scan list, but I find myself scanning less often while running the packet/aprs stuff.
My next steps will be toward HSMMMesh , and have been communicating with several groups interested in build a true high-speed digital backbone over RF. Follow that link for more info.
