*** WB2COY ***

I have been an Amateur Radio operator since 1971, starting out as a Technician, progressing up to General and then Advanced in 1976. Those were the days when you had to drive to an FCC Field Office in Manhattan to take the test in front of an FCC examiner! I have since achieved Extra class, having passed my exam on February 23, 2008.

Yours truly, in the shack, where everything comes together and reaches out to touch other people in our own country and throughout the world. Some may say, "Why do you bother with all this when you can contact other people over the internet in a chat room?" The Ham's answer to this is, "Should the time ever come that there is a catastrophic event which takes down the internet and/or phone system, a Ham can string a length of wire between two trees and contact the outside world".

This is a recent photo of the Ham Shack at WB2COY / N2ILI. The computer screen on the right is displaying the RTTY contest setup using N1MM and MMTTY in combination. On the left monitor is a secondary receive window running 2Tone RTTY receive program.

I was inactive for a number of years due to job and family commitments, but got back into the hobby in 2007 when I discovered the sound card digital modes. I am active mostly on HF RTTY, and achieved W.A.S. RTTY #677via LOTW on 1/23/09 with wire antennas and 100 watts or less. Most QSO's were made with 50 watts.

Finally achieved DXCC on RTTY with my meager station thanks to the sunspots and the new 10 meter RTTY contest the weekend of 12/4/2011! All via LOTW. I received my DXCC #2994 Certificate and Lapel Pin shortly afterward.

Digital Modes Memberships: Feld Hell # 1178, EPC # 5077, DMC # 6172, 30-MDG # 6262

Other Clubs: SMIRK # 1317, 10-10 # 12694

My main HF equipment is an ICOM-IC756PROIII using a G5RV on 20-10M and Inverted Vees on 40/15 and 80M.Backup equipment is an ICOM-IC756PROII or ICOM IC-7000, which is used mostly while traveling in my RV.

RTTY/Digital equipment is a US Interface Navigator, either WriteLog, N1MM or RCKLog contest software with MMTTY as the RTTY engine or MMVARI or FLDIGI as the PSK engine. Computer is an eMachine 2.2 Ghz Dual-Core Pentium with 3 GB Ram, running Windows 7/64-bit.

2013-04-05