Hello and welcome to the home of Amateur Radio Operator AD1L

This site uses the ISO 8601 date format YYYY-MM-DD

Above you can use the links to... View QSL Card designs / Review QSL Instructions / Search my Log / Review a list Bureau Card replies / View Interactive Propagation maps / Review live weather from my QTH.

I HAVE BEEN SUFFERING FROM A LIFE THREATENING ILLNESS AND WAS HOSPITALIZED FROM MID DEC 09 TILL MID FEB 10. I AM STILL VERY WEAK SO PLEASE ALLOW TIME FOR ME TO ANSWER THE HUNDREDS OF QSL CARDS I HAVE

Below is our story in photos, please click on any image to enlarge it, use browser back button to return to this screen.

This is me, that photo managed to be taken without breaking the camera....

The love of my life is my wonderful wife Susan....

This is Dickinson, when he is not performing his duties as 'The QSL Cat' he likes to spend time at his other job as a freelance quality control engineer for pillow manufacturers....                

Dickinson has a sister, her name is Luna and as a kitten she was voted most likely in her litter to rob a bank....

So you have meet the family, now to see where we hang out. We are located in the hill country of north central Massachusetts. We are at about 1200ft (366m) elevation, yet only about 52-miles (84Km) from the Atlantic Ocean, so that makes for a good radio QTH. We live in a house that I built myself on a 4-acre lot surrounded by the dense old-growth forest of a wildlife sanctuary....

About me.... I was born in Michigan to Irish immigrant parents, I am in fact a dual-national and hold passports for both the USA and the Republic of Ireland. I was in the United States Marine Corps 1980-84. For the last 22+ years I have been working as a Carpenter in the industrial and heavy civil end of the trade.

My computers.... I enjoy building and modifying computers, I currently have five machines in service.

Music.... It has been a constant in my life since childhood. I am a connoisseur of the music of obscure rock bands like Buffalo Tom, Swervedriver, Catherine Wheel, Ride, Juno, Pale Saints, Bettie Serveert, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Jam, Bob Mould, Jawbox, Lung Fish, Kitchens of Distinction, Jawbreaker, Film School, The Psychedelic Furs, Come, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, (I could go on and on).

The Ham story... I have held an Amateur Radio license for 17-years. After moving to the new QTH I had little room to spread out so my station had been growing. My favorite mode is RTTY and I can often be found running on 20m. I also enjoy the challenge of making contacts in any mode on 15 & 10m.

My equipment consists of...

• Icom IC-756ProIII transceiver and PS-125 power supply.

• I listen through a pair of Sennheiser HD-485 headphones, they are very comfortable, and they have excellent intelligibility for economical phones. 

• I speak through a Heil GM-5 microphone on a boom with a Heil FS-2 footswitch, keying of my amp is via an Ameritron ARB-704 relay buffer.

• Ameritron AL-1500 1.5KW amp, however I generally never use much more then 800W SSB and 250W RTTY.

• Palstar AT-Auto tuner, just an amazing piece of gear. It is a legal limit transmatch in which the capacitor and inductor roller are each automatically operated by microprocessor control 12VDC stepper motors. It also incorporates the PM2000A Avg/Peak/Peak-hold Wattmeter circuitry.

• Palstar DL2K dummy load, fan cooled with built in watt meter. The claim on this unit is it will handle 2KW keydown for 1.5 minutes.

• My accessory power supply is a Alinco DM-330MV 32-amp switching supply.

• A Navigator interface from US Interface provides me with rig control, FSK RTTY, AFSK digital modes, and a built-in K1EL WinKey 2.2 keyer. This is via my homebrew computer based on a BioStar T-Force TA780G M2+HP motherboard, AMD Phenom 8450 Tri-Core CPU, and 4GB of memory.

• All my gear is placed on my "radio cart" which is actually a heavy duty kitchen work island. It has large casters so it can be wheeled away from the wall, and the butcher block top has proven excellent from mounting my microphone boom. I have a large, comfy leather chair!

My tower and antenna... My tower is a Tashjian (Tri-Ex) LM-354 crankup at 54ft (16.5m). Mounted at 57ft (17.5m) is my OptiBeam OB11-3 Yagi manufactured by Thomas Schmenger (DF2BO) in Germany. The OptiBeam's eleven elements number three for 20m, three for 15m, and five for 10m. The beam is feed with 185ft of Andrew LDF4-50A Heliax 1/2" hard-line out to the tower, then a change to "Bury-Flex" from Davis RF for the run up the tower. The antenna is turned by a Yaesu G-1000DXA rotator.

For 40m (and 80m although not as often) I use an Alpha Delta DX-DD dipole, slightly modified to be feed directly with a CAL-AV 1:1 balun (RF choke). It is in fact only the second commercial made low band antenna I have ever owned, in the past I have built my own dipoles, half-squares, and such. It is hung at roughly 45ft (13.7m).

Emergency Power for my home is provided by a standby generator from General Electric, rated at 12KW (15KW surge). The generator is powered by a Briggs & Stratton 627cc Vanguard V-Twin engine running on liquid propane fuel. The generator unit is paired with a 200-Amp Service Entrance Rated automatic transfer switch, and because this transfer switch is connected to the mains before the household load center it means that once the generator is engaged power is available to all circuits in the house.

My email address can be found in the image below. You are welcome to drop me a line.

Peace

James - AD1L

Last updated 2010-03-24

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