Michael P. O'Connor

I been wanting to get a amature radio license plate for my car for a while now. Today after my annual eye exam I went down to the DMV and apply to get them, and have been told in about 4 to 5 weeks I should get them in the mail. It will be nice to have my call sign as my car’s license plates.

I got my General license in October, and a FT-710 back in December. I have been struggling on getting the setting right on the radio to so I could get a contact on HF. I have it hooked up to a LDG Z-100A tuner, and the Antanna is a Diamond HFV-5 pentaband antanna. But the settings on the radio were not right, I could not hear anything for such a long time. Today I found the issue on the settings there. But then the radio was not putting out the full 100W of power so I could not be heard, so I tried a full reset of the radio and set the recive setting to where I could hear. And tried again, this time I was able to get the full 100W out on 40M and then I tried to make contact again from my radio. It worked, I heard them at a 57 and they also heard me at a 57. And they were up in Massachusetts, so from Maryland I was able to reach Massachusetts. Before I could only make contacts from my car with the FT-891 on the ATAS 120 antanna, but now I can say I made 2 SSB contacts from my aprtment. I am very pleased with it. So now I can start to see if I can get on HF more. And maybe not spend as much time playing with the radio to get it to work, I can get on the air, and since I been ignoring my video games for about a month and half trying to get this to work, I can maybe put some more time back in the the video games. But hay I am now on the air not only in my car but also at my home QTH.

Also recently I had my mom’s old Lafayette HA-63 radio refurbished so I can listen to short wave radio at night.

All that is left to for the radio setup at home, is a few more things I wish to 3d print for my ham station, right now I am printing something so I can stow the computer keyboard and mouse under the table the radio is on, so I can have more room on the table. Mainly so I can take notes with a pen and paper. It is easier for my to copy call signs down on paper when I hear them then to try to type them into the computer.

(Originally posted this over on my ham radio only site https://kb3hcg.radio)
Well I found a good reason to have both 2m and 70cm calling freqs progreammed into ones mobile radio when traveling. I always knew the value of 2m National calling Freq, I found out that having the 70cm National calling freq also is also a good idea. On Monday April 6th I was driving back home from my dads place (he lives in FL, and I in MD) and while on the road I saw another ham (the antanna and the ham radio licence gave it away) so I put my call out on the 2m national calling freq (146.52) to see if I could get a responce back. He did try to respond on 2m, but his radio died when he keyed up, so he tried his other radio that was on the 70cm national calling freq (446.00). And since I have the Yaesu FTM-150 I did have both national calling freqs programmed in, and since it is dual band and dual watch, I heard him come back on the 70cm calling freq. We talked for about half an hour it was a good QSO.
I would say if you (like I do) do long drives sometimes, it might be worth it to have your radio(s) tuned to the 2m and 70cm national calling freq. (I was also able to make 2 40m contacts on that drive on Monday also, one was a HF net, and another was someone activating a POTA station.