This website is under construction, so please be patient.  It intends two things:
1)  To put as much information as I can about ham radio where it is easily accessible and
2)  To provide a library of the excellent and frfee “Hot Iron“ newsletters.

I hope you will find the content of this website to be helpful.  I’m just an old (84) HF ham, first licensed in 1957 while living on the island of Aruba where my father was a manager at the big ESSO refinery there from 1938 to 1958, at which point he retired and I went off to university.  We island residents used short wave radio to get our news and music as there was no TV in the 1940’s and ’50’s and only one local AM radio station, broadcasting in Dutch and Papiamento, and providing no US news.  WRUL (Back Bay Boston), VOA, the BBC and others were our go-to sources of news and entertainment.  So I grew up on short wave and it is in my DNA now, even though the internet has taken over most “broadcasting” work.

I’ve operated from the West Indies, Midway Island, Mediterranean maritime mobile and many U.S. locations, much of it during a 26 year Naval career. I could not operate while living in Greece or Saudi Arabia, unfortunately. I currently live in Chapel Hill, NC, retired from 20 years at the University of North Carolina’s Health Care system, which followed my Navy years.

My current station is small and I don’t operate much; mostly I tinker with projects. I am not an engineer and have learned what little I know on my own.  The operating bench consists of a little Yaesu 840 transceiver, a Heath DX-60B xmtr, 6L6 xmtr, Drake 2A receiver, Hammarlund HQ-140XA receiver, home brew tuners and power supplies and a couple of regens. The antenna is a 140 foot twinlead-fed delta (triangular) “loop”, and a receiving-only antenna which is a 400+ foot “loop” laid on the ground, which is very quiet and sometimes hears more than the delta loop.
The workbench includes various meters and power supplies, two O’scopes, a LM-8 frequency meter, HP Audio Generator and tools.
I have been an ARRL member for about 60 years and a Raleigh Amateur Radio Society (RARS) member for about 30 years.

Ham Projects in the que include:
*  Rebuilding the workbench general purpose HV power supply.
*  Finishing a homebrew 500 watt 813 tube linear amp.
*  Finishing a homebrew 2 x 807 tube cw/am transmitter.
*  Finishing rebuilding a nice Heath SB-1000 linear amp I found in the dump.
*  Restoring a Central Electronics 20A phasing-type SSB transmitter and its BC-458 VFO
*  Restoring a couple of BC-221 Heterodyne Frequency Meters.

Check out the other pages listed in the menu!