In 1961, I received my novice call, KN9DXL. I upgraded to General and dropped the "N" within a year. Like many others, my license lapsed sometime during the years of college, military service, and getting a career underway. Even though I wasn't an active ham after high school, my interest in radio and electronics steered me into a college major (radio and tv broadcast), an army MOS (84F20, television production specialist) and a 30+ year career in tv production and management.

My ham interest was rekindled in the late 70's when a co-worker dragged a Hallicrafters SX-101 into our engineering shop. I showed him how to tune in SSB and CW, and started copying some code. That was it, and within a few months I tested for my Advanced ticket and received my second call, WD4PKL. Moving back to "9" territory a few years later, I became KC9GOL. When the vanity program opened the appropriate gate, I retrieved K9DXL once more, and I'm sticking with it!

My QTH is the town of La Pointe, on Madeline Island in Lake Superior. Our town has a tourist and summer resident population of about 3,000, but in the winter there are just about 250 of us. I'm semi-retired and operate a small candy store during the summer season.

My station consists of a Kenwood TS-180S, Ameritron AL-811H amp, MFJ986 tuner and a G5RV at about 35 feet. Right now I work mostly 80/40/20 meters, but when Cycle 24 builds up some steam, 15 and 10 promise to be fun. I enjoy contesting and chasing the occasional DX, as I'm starting over on WAS from this QTH and working on DXCC, too. I've collected some boatanchors I could only dream about in my teen years, a Heathkit DX-100, Hammarlund HQ129X, and yes, a Hallicrafters SX-101. I'll be happy to QSL direct. 73, Jim

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  Last update ⇰ March 18, 2017