Where the Laws of Physics Cease to Play Nice

Having been a ham since I was 12 – almost half a century ago, I have seen a lot of changes. Having been inactive for a dozen years, I have recently gotten active again and rediscovering the joys and many changes to the hobby.

(Whadda MEAN Extras no longer have to take that horrific, complex written test and pass 20 WPM any more???)

I went inactive when I sold the big house and started with high rise condo living. That part remains true today as I live on the 9th floor, at 100 feet, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico on the Island of Sand Key in Clearwater Beach on the west coast of Florida near Tampa.

(Click Clearwater Beach for three live webcam shots from about 2 miles down the beach.)

With a massive 40′ long balcony with the above view, I am now erecting all kinds of stealth antenna for HF and even working AMSAT low earth orbit birds. (The above photo was shot from my balcony….the building you see in the foreground is of our sister property that is identical in style to ours…so you can get some idea of how large the balcony is here!) Located only 100 yards from both the Gulf of Mexico and Clearwater Bay, I am hopeful that all this salt water will have a very positive effect on my radiation patterns!

My Other Sites and More About Me

Besides playing with ham radio again, I have several other interests:

• I spend most of my time as Ceo and Chief Dragon Slayer for Ceo Resource LLC – I love what I do: Working with highly creative entrepreneurs, startup ventures and emerging companies – so together we can slay the multitude of dragons that try to block the path to their success. To date, Ceo Resource has already helped, on a one to one basis, nearly 2,000 diverse companies and their CEOs in over three dozen countries on six of the seven continents, with their start up company business planning, fundraising and plan implementation. Check out www.Virtual-Exec.com if you need help starting or growing your own company. (Special MAJOR discount for my FIRST client based in Antarctica!)Starting A New Company? Then check out my new blog by clicking Should You Start A Company? Also, check out my new Workshop for Start Up Companies by clicking Workshop!
• Also, my newest company, Start Up Company University at www.StartUpCompanyUniversity.com, has just released its first product. The first course is Funding Foreplay: A four module audio training course that is designed to teach start up company CEOs like you – how to properly prepare and present the dozen documents you must have to successfully romance and seduce angel investors and VC to invest in your company. Funding Foreplay is also available directly from Amazon by clicking www.FundingForeplayAtAmazon.com.I have condensed and distilled down what is required for funding foreplay – techniques that have taken me three decades to acquire and fine tune with real companies and real deals. Funding Foreplay is a one-of-a-kind curriculum that includes over five hours of audio and over 390 pages of real life, highly confidential, documents you can use as guides for your own dozen documents.
  

• Another more fun site of mine is my Dashing Good Man, or “Novelist Seeks Heroine” domain www.Good-Man.com which started as a one-page, one-picture web site, as an ad-hoc, more efficient, approach in my quest for me to find the right woman. It ended up developing into a major relationship site of over 350 web pages with 30,000 to 40,000 visitors a month and was pivotal in my successfully finding my wife Janet. (Less than a dozen folks out of well over two million visitors ever found all the hidden trails to all 350 plus web pages! How many can you find?)If you are looking for your own love of your life, check out my new site at Efficient Love to see if it might help you in your own Quest…and keep you from wasting another sunset! Efficient Love is an easy-to-read, thought-provoking and often-humorous guide that will have you completely rethinking almost everything you thought you already knew – about both your own Quest for Love and the traits of your ideal Hero or Heroine! Doesn’t it make sense to FIND your ideal Hero or Heroine as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to have as much glorious inefficiencies possible with them, as quickly as possible? Efficient Love will show you how.The 184 page paperback edition of my latest book, Efficient Love – The Good-Man Methodology is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and most bookstores for only $19.97! It’s also now available on the Kindle and as a direct downloadable ebook! If it’s not in stock at your favorite bookstore, just have them special order you a copy. Tell the bookstore the ISBN # is 978-0-9792952-0-1.As for my own Quest, it was TOTALLY successful – using the same Efficient Love Method described in the book! You can read all the details on my success finding Janet by clicking Heroine.

• Photography has been a passion of mine for almost as long as ham radio has. It is one of the many things that my wife, Janet, and I share. (The filmstrips at the top and bottom of these web pages are photos that either I or Janet have taken.) If you like to see more of my photography in high resolution mode, please click www.Good-Photo.com.

Video Of Some Of My Photography Of The Smoky Mountains In Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Here’s some of my own photography done as a video set to music on YouTube.com. (Best seen in full screen and hi def mode.) I just uploaded this – and would appreciate your viewing it and leaving your comments.

If you enjoy the movie, your thumbs up and comments there would be greatly appreciated.

The Equipment

At this stage in my life, I approach many things, including my renewed interest in ham radio, with a minimalist philosophy…where less is more. Things have changed from the wall of equipment I used to have. Now the radio equipment include a Yaesu FT-897D 160M – 70 CM 100 Watt All Mode Transceiver that is the size of an abridged dictionary and a Yaesu FT-857D 160M – 70 CM 100 Watt All Mode Transceiver that is smaller than a Tom Clancy large format paper back novel.

Both rigs, along with the two auto tuners, etc. are dwarfed by the four computers and the four 19″ LCD screens, plus two notebook screens and especially by the 37″ 1080p Sharp Aquos hi def computer monitor (it’s also a TV!) on the conference table that I use as my desk (I need this many for my businesses). The Aquos makes such a great monitor that so greatly enhances my work productivity that I rarely use it to watch TV…instead, I use Media Center windows on other computer screens to watch TV (mostly tuned to CNBC and CNN during the day.) I run two of the computers in dual screen mode which successfully adds to my information overload!

My primary activities are all things digital plus AMSAT…though you never know….you may hear me even using a microphone or key from time to time!

When I had the TH7DX and tower and that wall of equipment back at the big house, I KNEW that I could contact just about anyone I heard. Now that the entire RF portion of my shack occupies little more than one cubic foot, I am learning the pleasures of NOT knowing I can contact just anyone. With low power, if not QRP, and stetitleh antennae, the challenge and the enjoyment of the challenge are back!

If you are interested in ALL the station equipment, click on Equipment.

The AA5FR “Shack-N-Bag” ^TM

The AA5FR “Shack-N-Bag” ^TM is my packaging approach to turn the FT-857 into something that is at least as portable as my old FT-817ND. It combines the following into an easy to grab and go 16 lb. package.

For details and photos, click Shack-N-Bag ^TM

Two QTHs

One of the main reasons I went with both the FT-897D and the FT-857D is that we have two home: one on the beach on Sand Key Island in Clearwater Beach, Florida and the other on a mountain top in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I wanted a rig that would work during the multitude of hurricanes and resulting power outages AND something that was immediately portable in case of evacuations. I also wanted something that I could easily run from the car as well as take to our mountain home.

Again, with our condo in the mountains, comes antenna restrictions and a small balcony along with the above spectacular view. For the Smokies, I use a Yaesu ATAS-120a (Click here for photos!)

So, you may be working me from either of these great locations – or – some evacuation center during Hurricane XYZ!

73 / 72,

AA5FR