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I finally did it - I got a call that works in a CW contest! I decided I was tired of confusing people with /1 or /7, so I got a local call now that I'm here in Arizona for a while. I've been an amateur radio operator (ham) since high school. I was first licensed as WN6BIG (dumb luck) in 1962. Changed to WB6BIG when I got my general a few months later. I owe a lot to the hobby and the people who helped me along the way. I took a long leave from the hobby, but I've recently spent some time reacquainting myself with the joys of tinkering with technology and communicating with people all over the world. I'm not sure why I find it so intriguing, but I do. For a short time I also held the call WA1WOE. My primary interest is tinkering around with various tools and technologies. I use contests as a vehicle to test things. These days I spend most of my operating time in RTTY and CW contests. You'll usually find me doing Search and Pounce. I also work on a few utilities related to WriteLog a contest logging program. The main utility is called FKeys and you can download it from this site if you'd like to try it. The others are WLIniEdit and RFW. On the hardware side I've been trying out various combinations of USB serial port hardware to connect to various radio devices. I've also been building some hardware to make the interfaces easier. So far the Dual CI-V interface and SO2R box are on the site. The station consists of a pair of Omni VI+'s, an Elecraft K2/100 or an IC-746 followed by an Alpha 87A (if needed). The two Omni VI+ radios are set up for SO2R operation. The radios lead into one of several antennas. An F12 -C4e, an MA5B mini-beam (close to omni-directional) and a GAP vertical for HF. On VHF we have the 746 into verticals. On the receive side, audio signals go into a Timewave DSP-599zx and then into one no-name computer. For contesting I use WriteLog and for general logging I use DXbase. This is a far cry from the SX140/HT40 and Model 26 TTY of 1963.
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