[RickB]

de KI5SL.. I've kept the license current, well, as current as a grandfathered Advanced can be...but very rarely get on the air...usually only to check into the Collins Collectors net on Sundays....

Worked a lot of stations via satellite in years past when AO-10 and AO-13 were hot...made contact with the Space Shuttle twice, once via voice and once via packet...

Got into Ham radio in the eighties when I started worrying about all the power I was using on Chicken Band and fearing a visit by Uncle Charlie...also wanted to explore the digital modes like FAX, RTTY, PACKET, etc...remember, this was before the Internet explosion...but, we did set up a TCP/IP network here back before there was ANY html at all, using Kantronics D4-10 radios, Ottawa Packet Interface cards in our computers, and the NOS program...had my own dotted IP, I guess it's still mine...we had a gateway to the Internet at the old Datapoint Corp., here in town...we used the net back then to set up skeds with Hams all over the world, well, wherever there was a DARPANET/Internet gateway to Packet radio, I guess, everything was at command line, even the chats...no Windows, even pre Linux...ahh, the good old days!!!

It was always fun to download weather fax from the likes of Bracknell, NOAA, even some of the satellites...and to search out and find FAX and RTTY transmissions from news outlets around the world, sometimes even ships at sea...those are gone, moved to the Internet and to satellite communications, no more "eavesdropping"!...

I have been a SWL since 1963, though, 2 years after my first exposure to Ham Radio with a visit to my Father's best friend in New Jersey...but, as a nine year old kid didn't know anybody that was in to it down here in San Antonio...so, got a cheapo SW receiver for my 11th birthday and been hooked ever since...

I do miss high sunspot activity and the days of the Cold War and all the various propaganda outlets by all the little third-world countries...interesting times...maybe when the spots swing around again I'll get active....HF was always my favorite but there's just nothing that I can hear lately that makes me want to get on the air...

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