N2CKH Amateur Radio Software™

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Welcome to my web site and thanks for taking the time to visit. This main page as you scroll down provides a summary of my overall interests and activities, for more details please select the appropriate menu selection on the side bar.

Herein I will provide a tour inside and outside of my station and provide insight into my interests in Amateur Radio. I will share some of the most interesting radio related experiences, the techniques that I have learned, and other useful information that I have gathered. I will also share in words and pictures some of the unique radio equipment that has accounted for my past 35 years plus of radio enjoyment starting with my Father's gift to me of a Hammarlund SP-200 receiver (which I still have).
I shall also provide insight into my current fun pursuits within the hobby in such areas as HF mobile, repeater system development, software and firmware development and the subjects of terrain analysis, path loss, antenna design, propagation and others. I shall also share some of my opinions as to the current state and future of the Amateur Radio Serivice.
My main interest in the Amateur Radio Service is providing "Service" to the community in which I live via Amateur Radio, this is the most REWARDING aspect of Amateur Radio. I do so via my personally owned and operated repeater systems and the communications systems for which I provide technical support that belong to the various organizations that I am associated with.
I provide support to my local Township Office of Emergency Management (OEM) as a RACES operator and I also participate in Public Service communications with my clubs: Ocean-Monmouth ARC. and AERIALS ARC.
In the past I have also provided support via my interest in Amateur Radio to our servicemen and women via the Navy Marine Corps MARS program worldwide and I as my life style has slowed to the point where I can again make the needed commitment. In early 2003 rejoined the MARS program as an U.S. Army MARS member this time around after over 10 years of MARS in activity.
I have been involved in many aspects of current MARS operations on a local NJ and Regional level since returning to MARS. How evere most of my free time is spent working on the development of a software based PC sound card modem based MIL-STD-188-141A Controller with 141B extensions and FS-1052 and STANAG Data Link Protocol Layer extensions based on PC-ALE by G4GUO geared to meet the needs of MARS.

If you are a MARS member and found your way here but are not already a member of the MARS-ALE Forum you are invited to join. ALE reference materials and links can be found at the MARS-ALE Forum files section.
At my QTH I spend hours on end at times having FUN chasing DX when I can. I may spend even more time resolving QSL routes to get those confirmation QSL cards, this is not FUN. This is a very personal pursuit that one can undertake regardless of schedule committments.
"The worst day of DXing is infinitely better than the best day doing almost anything else with clothes on!"
I also work DX while mobile on HF/6m and portable as well at QRP to 100 watt levels. I found that for years I spent most of my time away from home and often bored in my vehicle, HF mobile changes all that !

Although DXing is not my only pursuit in the hobby, it is however at the top of the FUN list or activities. I have recently passed the 270 countries worked mark mixed mode phone and CW on HF. I am almost at 5 Band DXCC worked as well and closing in on WAS and DXCC on 6 meters. Although I don't give an IOTA (hi hi), I am just now getting focused on IOTA as I realized I have over 100 IOTA contacts in the log.
Contesting comes next on the FUN list, especially HF phone DX contests (some CW contesting too) and the ARRL VHF contests. I work all bands 160 meters through 70 centimeters (satellite too, when Oscar 13 was operational), however these days I mostly work 160-6m. I work the modes of AM , CW, SSB, FM, PSK31, RTTY regurly and I have also worked SSTV and ATV, although not currently.

The photo above is my A4S/A50-5S in a living Oak Tree that was used in lieu of getting involved with the local township and its stupid 25 foot tower limitation and variance garbage, I made an installation out of a tree my HF operations that they could not say a word about, well above 25 feet in 2000, click here to see the Tail Twister move her around.
I have a rather nice Antenna Farm installation for my MF/HF operations. I do however suffer from insufficient height for all my VHF plus operations taking into consideration the surrounding terrain and man made structures that will need addressing in the near future.

As I am now middle aged, buying old Yaesu FT-101 series equipment to put complete station on the air kind of makes sense ? The '101 series equipment was the station that I wanted and could not afford as a teenager. Many of my friends that were a bit older had these and I wanted the same thing. I also keep looking at the old Hammerlund SP-200 and HQ-120X sitting in the corner as well, is a surplus AM broadcast transmitter for a 160m next ? All is not lost, then again, I did recently achieve the aquisition of my dream amplifier that doesn't leave much room in the house for commercial AM transmitter at this point. Soon, when cruising along at full legal limit during a constest is needed, my wonderful Collins 204F-1 2.5Kw amplifier pictured below will be an option, it will even allow for full legal limit operation on 160m AM. Click here to read my story about the aquisition of the Collins 204F-1 as recently published in DX-Magazine.

I have once again developed a good test bench where I am now spending a good deal of time in support of my efforts developing repeater systems and a linking hub that began with the N2CKH/R 6 meter repeater system.

I now have 6m, 2m, 1.25m and 70cm repeaters on the air from Lakewood and two Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) nodes (see the system diagram below) to support worldwide linking. I have even built a seperate building on the property to house all the repeaters, however, as it is not yet fully completed, the systems are still in the residence and as such I must power them down when those wonder summer thunder and lightening storms come along or are predicted as KC2KQG (the XYL) does not like the idea of lightening coming into the house... hi hi

In addition, in conjunction with AERIALS, I support the 443 repeater system in the Township of Ocean in Monmouth county and provide a link to IRLP acces on that system and will soon be doing the same for the OMARC 145.110 repeater located in Farmingdale, Monmouth county. I am also learning to program for the Linux OS in an effort to add more features to IRLP for DX spotting and Severe Weather Alerting.
My QRP station position pictured below consists of Yaesu FT-817 5w transceiver and MFJ antenna tuner. I am constantly amazed at what can be done with just 5 watts at times when propagation is good. When a little more QRO is needed I can drive the Yaesu FL-110 100w amplifier pictured next to it.

Thanks for visiting, please send me an e-mail on anything you find to be of interest.
/s/ Steve, N2CKH

For more information please click here to send e-mail.

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