Welcome to my website. I’ve been an Amateur Radio Operator since 1980.It’s been a fun ride so far. My tastes are somewhat varied.

My Amateur Radio interests in no particular order include

• Amateur Radio Direction Finding (also called Fox-hunting, Bunny hunting, and several other names)
• Portable HF operation – I love nothing better than to set up a Ham station, and make contacts from a location where none existed just hours before. You may find me operating from the woods of Pennsylvania, or an Ohio State Park, or anywhere else life takes me.
• Contesting – I enjoy a good contest. I don’t sit down & devote my whole weekend to it, but a few hours, anyway. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better way to spend a few hours on a weekend afternoon.

I’m getting into awards chasing. I’ve finished the requirements for the ARRL Triple Play award, but I’m too darned cheap to pay the cost of the award. The object is to make a contact with each US State, using CW, Phone, & Digital Mode. To make things tougher, they all must be confirmed using Logbook Of The World. I got into it a bit late, but I’m finding it to be a lot of fun.

For fun, I reset my LOTW default account at the beginning of 2018. SO I’m looking at doing it all again. That is, WAS, Triple Play, and anything else I find interesting.

Before becoming a Traffic Signal and lighting Technician, I spent several years as a TV repairman. Around 2000, I saw the handwriting on the wall, went to school to pursue a new career. After graduating from Stark State College, with a degree in Computer Science, I went to work for the City of Canton Traffic Signal Department.

Since then, my leisure time is spent writing web pages, and playing Ham Radio.

I originally started this website about 2000. Because my QSL.NET email account came with some webspace, I opened Front Page, and “made a webpage”. That did it; I was hooked. The site grew to around 140 pages. I quickly scrapped FrontPage in favor of hand coded HTML/CSS written using Textpad. Now we are using WordPress. Things have sure changed a lot since those days.

This site is continually under construction. In 2013, I finally started the rewrite that I’d planning for several years.

Don’t forget to check out my unofficial PA QSO Party Page at http://www.kd8mq.net/pqp/. This will be transitioning away in the next few years, but for now, it provides information that some find useful.

I invite you to check back often to see what’s happening.

73,

John, KD8MQ