Ham radio - LA4RT

I got my license in my early teens, back in the 70's, but went QRT around 1980. I took it up again in 2004, and am active on HF, mostly CW. The rig is an Elecraft K3, the antenna I use most is my "monster balcony antenna" which I can take down in minute in case of a thunderstorm or if I'm not planning to use it for a while. It's simply a full size vertical for 40 m taped to a Spiderbeam 12 m telescoping pole. I use two radials draped over the roof and drooping along the walls. With a tuner, I get surprisingly good results also on higher bands. I sometimes use the pole for other resonant antennas, but for everyday use, I don't bother. I can get away with this because the coax is very short. To get on 80 m, I can support an inv V from an 18 m Spiderbeam pole. The topmost sections are too flimsy, so the peak ends up at 15 m.

I operate from Vestre Sandøya island, IOTA EU-061, during summer vacations.

I upload my logs to LOTW and Clublog. I also answer bureau and direct cards.

Here is some information about the memory format of the Yaesu VX-6 2m/70cm HT. I contributed this to Dan Smith's excellent program 'chirp', which supports the VX-6 and a multitude of other radios on Windows, Linux and Mac.

These are the IOTA groups in Norway.