I first became interested in Ham Radio in 1965, at the age of 9, and took my first Novice test in 1965, administered by the Extra Class mentor down the street. Unfortunately, the novice was a one year, non-renewable license, and General Class with it’s 13wpm, and much tougher test was beyond me at age 10.

My interest in Ham radio was rekindled in 1975, at the age of 19, and I took a Novice Class offered by the Austin Amateur Radio Club. I later upgraded to General, and then passed the 20wpm code in 1985, only to fail the Advanced written element by just a little. At the time the completion of any element was only good for one year, and I did not make it to another testing session for nearly 25 years – meantime I had let my license expire.

The second time around came in Abilene, Texas, and I made it from zero to General Class on the first try, and scored a 55% on the Extra that day, too. At the very next hamfest a few weeks later, I took the Extra and passed it. This time it was 5wpm instead of 20wpm. The Extra Test might be easier now, I only know the Advanced Test in 1983 was very hard, as I missed it then by a couple of questions.

Since becoming active again, he has been involved as a supporting person in the 443.100 repeater owned by Joe, KD5YCY, and authored this web site.

GE Rangr work

I have developed a solid set of mods for the GE Rangr low band R89/051 radio, previously avoided by most hams because it would burn (as in SMOKE) up the PA when they were operated on 6 meters. A few simple mods and the radios produce 100w and don’t heat up more than normal. The Low Band Rangr conversion to 6m document is posted in the GE Section of the Repeater-Builder website.

http://www.repeater-builder.com/rangr/low-band-rangr-conversion.html

6 meter repeater project

I have undertaken to build a six meter repeater, making homemade duplexers, and using converted commercial radios and antennas.

See a little more at the BCARNTX web page or view here…

http://www.nz5v.net/6m_repeater_project.htm

Home-Brew 6m Duplexers

I have also made a set of home-brew suplexers. Take a look at the project:

http://www.nz5v.net/6m-project-duplexer.htm

Internet roles in our hobby for NZ5V

My other hobby is astronomy, and I am currently building a 140mm dia. 750mm FL short focus refractor and an equatorial mount. The main objective is a Cooke Triplet taken from a huge enlarger (It’s an OPTI-COPY lens). This lens is remarkable because it is color corrected for 4 colors, and well, it’s MLO (material Labor and overhead) cost was $18,500 in 1985. It is also spec’d to 600 lines resolution at an accuracy of .01%.

All the eyepieces for the telescope have been hand made, from surplus lenses taken from various types of optics and combined in suitable configurations for wide angle, good eye-relief eyepieces, as well as a handmade focuser for the scope using a 3″ drawtube and a large 3″ diagonal using a prism taken from a large camera. The equatorial mount is made using 1 1/2″ steel shafts and a roller-thrust bearing mount assembly.

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