AE8D

Note: I submit my QSOs in real-time via LoTW, eQSL, QRZ, Club Log, and HRDLOG/Ham365. Manual updates may be delayed up to 24 hours.

Hi there,

My name is Darrin, and I am an amateur extra class ham radio operator. My family and I moved to Redmond, Washington USA (just east of Seattle) in the Spring of 2022. However, I consider the San Francisco Bay Area home as I grew up and spent most of my life there. I bounced back and forth between the SF Bay area and southern Oregon between 1980 and 1994 before moving to the Washington DC metro, where I lived and worked from 1994 until moving back to SF in 2010.

While I didn't get my ham license until 2022, I don't really consider myself a new ham as I've been involved with ham radio off and on since the early 1980s. A close friend's father introduced me to amateur radio while I was a teenager. I never pursued a license at the time since I couldn't afford gear for my own station at the time (and I wasn't interested in learning CW), so I was mainly involved as a spectator and tag-along. Eventually, I got busy with college, building a company, and other interests, so ham radio fell to the wayside. I just returned to the hobby in the Summer of 2022, 35-40 years later.

As an amateur radio operator and computer scientist, my primary interest is in SDR and digital radio modes. I am having fun with FT8/FT4 & JS8Call right now, but I am also investigating FLdigi (along with FLamp and FLmsg for digital file exchange and message delivery) and plan to experiment with other digital modes soon. I've played around with MFSK in some of my digital nets, but I'm particularly interested in trying out Olivia, Contestia, and THOR. I also have RTTY set up, and I'd like to try it out, but I haven't found many people using it.

Since getting my extra ticket, I have become an accredited Volunteer Examiner (VE) for ARRL, GLAARG, and W5YI. I am a member of the Lake Washington Ham Club (K7LWH) and a volunteer on the club's VE team (AE7TD). Though I do most of my VE work remotely as part of the N7DJE and WM7X VE teams. I volunteer as often as possible since I enjoy playing at least a small part in helping new people get into the hobby.

I am now registered as a POTA Hunter. This is cool since I enjoy helping folks who are doing POTA activations anyway. :)

My next project is setting up my station to work the amateur radio satellites and ARISS (the International Space Station). Once it starts warming back up, my plan is to pick up a tripod and a pair of high-gain circularly polarized beam antennas (2m and 70cm for sure, possibly 23cm as well) mounted on a Yaesu G5500 Az-El rotor paired to my IC-9700. I'm exploring antenna options right now, while trying to find a good LNA preamp for 70cm (and 23cm if I go that way). I'm leaning toward the M² yagis or the WiMo X-Quad antennas, but I am still investigating what is out there. I plan to start with a portable solution and move it to my roof once we get settled into a more permanent location. My near-term goal is to catch NA1SS on the radio to give my daughter a chance to chat with an astronaut and to land a QSL card for myself before they decommission the station (scheduled to occur sometime between 2024-2028).

My Radios

• FlexRadio FLEX-6600 HF SDR transceiver w/SmartSDR for Mac and Windows
• ICOM IC-9700 VHF/UHF transceiver
• Yaesu FT5Dr handheld VHF/UHF transceiver
• Baofeng BTECH GMRS-V2 handheld GMRS transceiver w/Nagoya NA-771G antenna
• Uniden SDS-200 Digital Trunking Scanner

My Antennas

• DX Commander Classic (80m version) multi-band vertical antenna (primary HF antenna)
• 80-meter horizontal sky loop antenna (HF diversity reception and NVIS) – not deployed yet due to snowy weather
• Comet CA-2X4SRNMO VHF/UHF mobile antenna – temporary until I get a permanent 2m/70cm external antenna

Support Gear

• ASTRON RS-35M-AP linear DC power supply
• SharkRF openSPOT4 Pro hotspot (my local node for DMR, D-STAR, NXDN, and Fusion/Wires-X)
• DeepElec DeepVNA (NanoVNA-F) Vector Network Analyzer

With my current gear, I can work all amateur bands from 80m to 23cm except 60m and 33cm. However, you'll typically see me running FT8 or FT4 on 80-, 40-, or 30-meters at night or 30-, 20-, 17-, 15-, 12-, or 10-meters during the day, depending on propagation and band activity. I also listen to 2m & 70cm traffic on my local repeaters, but I'm not very active there since I'm not particularly interested in ragchew. I mainly pay attention during the nets but I often leave the VHF/UHF radio on for monitoring at other times.

In addition to ham radio, my family is licensed under the General Mobile Radio Service as WRQU243. My daughter is more active on the FRS/GMRS bands than I am. She uses her GMRS radio to practice proper radio technique while preparing to begin studying for her technician exam. We mainly use those radios when caravaning or for family events when the weather is nice.

My DMR radio ID is 3194217. However, I am not terribly active on DMR or any other digital FM modes. I monitor various talkgroups from time to time but rarely key up myself.

Outside of amateur radio, I am a technology executive, software engineer, game developer, and business owner. I am married, with a 7-year-old daughter who keeps me on my toes.

Thanks for stopping by!

73 de AE8D