KE9V is my amateur radio call sign that also serves as a short, unique, domain name. Licensed and continuously active in this hobby since 1977, I've explored many of the facets of ham radio from spark to space!
An engineer, more than forty winters at the coalface, I retired in 2022. Married 47 years, my wife and I have four adult children, six grandchildren, and we share our home with a furry friend named Marshall Tucker. We live in a small town in East-Central Indiana. EN70. Born and raised in this area, we left long ago in search of fortune and glory. A decade later we returned. Seems we like flat-land, corn fields, and simple living.
I've spent most of my ham radio life at HF using low-power. Until recently I never owned an amplifier, never wanted one. Probably because I fell in with a gang of hard-core QRPers during the last great wave of that movement near the end of the 20th century. Ripples from that continue to influence my ham radio experience.
Kicking off my third act of life forced me to acknowledge the limits of my remaining time and to focus on unfinished business. Despite having often said, "wallpaper is unimportant", I did want a DXCC certificate on the wall. Having worked hundreds of unique DX entities throughout the years, my logging was spotty at best, I never kept QSL cards, and never applied for anything. I started over in the chase for DXCC in May 2022.
Using LoTW exclusively, I've since collected DXCC Mixed, CW, Digital, 20M, 15M, 12M, and 10M. I'm currently over 700 in the DXCC Challenge. Along the way I completed the Triple Play WAS award (#2610).
I'm a Life Member of AMSAT, ARRL, QCWA, and the Long Island CW Club and a supporting member of INDEXA.
I use MacLoggerDX for primary station logging along with N1MM+ for contesting.
Backup gear includes an IC-7610 transceiver, a Mercury IIIs amplifier and the MercuryAT auto tuner.
All radio contacts are confirmed via LoTW and Club Log. I'm good on QRZ for postal cards, but I only respond to these once each year. Follow me on Mastodon. Direct email to: ke9v@arrl.net
