Welcome to my ham radio site. I was first licensed as a Technician on June 15, 1993 and upgraded to Extra in 2006. That day, I was planning to upgrade to General. The VE told me that I was welcome to take the Extra test at no extra charge and the worst that could happen was I'd get the General ticket since I'd already passed. I took the Extra exam and I remember it was hard. I hadn't studied for it per se. I just knew the material. The VE told me that I passed by ONE question. If I had gotten one more wrong, I would have failed. But there I was, a newly-minted Extra, and I didn't even have it on my radar. I'll never forget that day.

I enjoy home-brewing, working DX, ragchew nets, VHF and UHF, digital modes, etc. I'm on almost every band from 40 meters to 5 cm.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated with electronics. I loved to take apart devices, especially radios, just to see how they were built (my 5-year-old is starting to do this). I seldom could put them back together. I built my first AM transmitter when I was about 8 years old and learned how to program computers in BASIC 2 years later. Nowadays, I pretty much do the same thing but on a more advanced level. I'm not an expert in anything but I'm always reading and learning something new.

I graduated from Regis University with a BS in computer information systems. I'm a Linux guy so I use Kubuntu Linux on all machines except for the servers which run vanilla Ubuntu Server. There's a laptop running Windows for programming /\/\ radios but don't tell anyone! A small army of virtual machines do number crunching for the Folding@Home project at Stanford University. I've also been having some fun with the Raspberry Pi miniature computers. I made my own home security system by setting some up with webcams that stream and store video.

I'm located in Kansas City, MO and I work from home as a System Engineer at a large US-based tech company. It's said that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life and that describes me well. I'm very blessed.

I recently decided to try out DMR so I bought some Motorola Mototrbo MTX-4350s for VHF and UHF. It's not as busy as I had hoped but it's fun to play with. My radio ID is 3213607. I've also been experimenting with AREDN Mesh and a digipeater.