WK4LR Rodney G. 'Rod' Baker Jr Apopka, FL QCWA # 36275 Chapter 45

QTH is Forest City -- near Orlando, Florida, USA.

Ham Passions: I like phone and CW, fixed, mobile or "picnic table" portable. I'll run QRP anytime conditions permit and really like the idea of communicating more than 1,000 miles per watt. I was away from the hobby between 1997 and 2012 earning a living, so my code is rusty with maybe a 12-14 WPM receiving speed right now. It seems surprisingly hard to reacquire CW when you get to age 65, but I'll keep plugging away at it. Rag chews are fun, but it's hard to find anyone who wants more than an exchange of callsigns and signal reports.

Other hobbies include:
-Backyard astronomy (Meade 5" ETX.)
-Playing trombone.
-Bible study as an Episcopalian.
-Hiking in Florida and Georgia state parks plus occasional section hiking on the AT in Tennessee.
-Fostering retired racing greyhounds. We've taken in 75 of them so far.
-Digital photography with Nikon D80 and Adobe Lightroom/Elements 11. Look on Flickr if you want to see my stuff: www.flickr.com/photos/topbrass
-Bulls-eye pistol shooting at the local range.
-Bicycling on Florida's wonderful rails-to-trails system (Trek FX 7.3)
-Eating right, exercising and losing weight.

QRO Base Station Rig is a Kenwood TS0850SAT with Heil HC-6 headset and a West Mountain CLRdsp unit into a Palstar speaker. Antenna is a 92 foot long 8-band version of an inverted vee G5RV (the "ZS6BKW") at 15.25 meters (50 feet.) Tuned as necessary by an LDG600 ProII autotuner. I usually run 10 to 100 Watts, but an AL-811 linear amp is handy whenever its 400-600 Watts is needed at the far end.

April 1, 2015