History
I was first licensed as a young Novice in New Hampshire as WN1GXK (as a Novice)/WB1GXK (when I upgraded to Technician) when you had to go visit the FCC regional commissioner to take your exam. Boy, weren’t crystal rigs fun? I made a bunch of contacts on 80m CW and tried out a bit of VHF, but never had the perseverence to upgrade to 13wpm code and a General license.
After a long career as a computer scientist and Internet engineer, I returned to the hobby in the 1990s when digital modes and ham satellites became popular. Somehow, the code was a lot easier to learn when I could drill as many hours as I wanted at the computer, so I re-entered the hobby as KC1UF. With about 9 months more drilling to get my code speed up to 20 wpm, I became WG1V in 2000, or if you prefer alcoholic phonetics, Whiskey Gin One Vodka.
Station Information
Today, I live in Stow, MA on the side of a hill with at least 4 other hams in the neighborhood. The downside is the hill – I have great visibility to the south, but I can forget about getting much propagation to the north because of a lot of dirt between the sky and me.
My main rig is a Flexradio 6600 connected to Q5 144Mhz and 440Mhz transverters. My HF antenna is a 80-6m end-fed designed by W1IS and KC1DSQ. I also own an IC-705 for portable work. I work mostly digital modes and CW on HF, I participate in our local ARES emergency service on VHF/UHF, and I have a mobile satellite antenna that I occasionally use with the IC-705 and an SDR.
I also run a couple additional radio-based services on Raspberry Pis, including a wireless weather station and an ADS-B decoder that feeds all the major aircraft tracking services including Flightaware, FlightRadar24, and ADSBexchange.
