I picked up Ham radio as a retirement hobby, having never been licensed before. Even tho I was an Eagle Scout and learned morse code, I was not that eager to study and practice morse to take the test…but then the FCC dropped that requirement! I got interested at scout camp in 2015 and decided to take the test, which with the help of HamTestOnline I passed with flying colors. OK, I missed one question on the Technician exam…probably was going too fast 😉 . I then took and passed the General exam in January 2016, again with the help of HamTestOnline, so now I’m good to go with VHF/UHF or HF.
For HF/6M, I have a Yaesu FT-450D with a Buckmaster off-center-fed 7-band dipole antennae. It works quite well. I spend a bit of time on 72Chew.net (7.272), and have talked with folks all over the country. I’m currently Net Control Station (NCS) on the Chew at 10am on Thursdays.
I have a Yaesu FT-7900 in my truck, that works well for mobile VHF/UHF. I also have some handheld (HT) radios: a couple of Baofeng UV-5R’s and a Kenwood TH-D72. The TH-D72 does APRS, which is quite interesting (look for KM4NOU-9 on aprs.fi). When at home in Emerald Isle, I’m monitoring and participating on the Newport 2M repeater. Additionally, I have Voice Alert configured on the APRS channel with CTSS-100 (see configuration info from Bob Bruninga here), so I will receive a ping if we are in simplex range, and can take a voice call on 144.39Mhz.
Otherwise, ping me by email at joel@km4nou.net.