N7DK

[Updated June 3, 2018]

I was first licensed in 1962 as KN1YST at age 15. My "Elmer" was Capt Morris Kasanof (W1OY-SK), retired from the WWII Army Signal Corps. I passed the General test at 16 and the Extra at 18, and stayed with K1YST as my call until moving to Arizona in 1992.

As shown below, my first rigs were ARC-5 war surplus transmitters on 80/40 CW/AM with a Heathkit AR-3 receiver and long wire. The AR-3 is still running more than 50 years after I built it. The rest of the parts came from old TV sets and other surplus gear. Total cost for everything back then was about $100.

I run a base station with a FlexRadio 6400 (not shown in picture), TenTec Omni VII, Ameritron AL-80B. Antennas are a HyGain 12AVQ 20-15-10 trap vertical on my roof and a 300-foot loop on the perimeter of my house driven via an SGC smart coupler that delivers a great match on any band. I'm always experimenting with "low-visibility" antenna designs. 

For years I've used an SDRPlay/SDRConsole software-defined radio to give me a full waterfall panadapter capability to control the Omni VII. It's so effective as a human interface that I rarely use the Omni's tuning dial any more! I got so used to waterfall tuning that in April, 2018, I started using the Flexradio 6400. So far, it's very cool (!). 

I've just discovered FT8, and I'm really enjoying it -- with less than 50 watts to that 300-foot loop, I can work all bands, racking up contacts especially on the 30m and 17m bands that I'd mostly ignored until FT8. The shack is in a 3rd-car garage - my "man cave", and I run it remotely from my study while I work on other projects. FT8 makes that very convenient. 

I was born in Ohio, and I've lived in Illinois, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, and now Arizona, where my first wife (married since 1973) and I intend to stay! I have a PhD in electrical engineering, and I credit amateur radio for getting me started. My schools for EE were Washington University (St. Louis), Cornell, and Penn. My engineering career was mostly in digital communications, wired and wireless, for the old AT&T Bell Labs, Bellcore, Motorola, and Intel. Including my summer jobs, my assignments varied from lab technician to technical vice president on many exciting telecom projects. 

In retirement since 2008, I help teach special 1-day hands-on workshops in science (mostly physics) to Grades 4-8 at the Arizona Science Lab. Since ASL's founding in 2009, we've taught over 17,000 students. We teach some basic physics and then build bottle rockets, solar cars, electric motors, sailboats, and other hands-on projects. Our web site (AzSciencelab.org) shows videos of the volunteers and kids learning and working on the projects. (I'd be interested in sharing info with hams doing similar things. Send email to n7dk@arrl.net.) I've also been a volunteer reader for the blind at a National Public Radio affiliate and a writer/videographer for the conservative-friendly website www.WesternFreePress.com.

I like the occasional contest and especially the new FT8 mode, which has now finally replaced CW as my favorite mode.