Station

Real gear, in the order it was acquired — pulled directly from the QRZ bio.

First radio: Baofeng UV5R. The primary mobile station for local FM repeater use for about a year.

2024 upgrade: Yaesu FTM-300D and FT-891, mobile. A full video tour of the upgraded mobile station exists — Rain or Shine Mobile Ham Radio Station Tour, POTA DX and Local.

First eBay project radio: ICOM IC-255A. Paired with a Communications Specialists TE-32 CTCSS encoder (still working out a slight AC hum in the tone signal) and a Mirage B 2518 G amplifier, used for simplex FM band openings on 146.520 and local FM traffic on 146.490. A 2024 VHF band opening reached W4EFT in Foley, AL, KX5E in Mississippi (246 mi / 397 km), and WD5M in Texas (621 mi / 999 km), FM VHF simplex with a Comet-NCG CSB-790A at about 20 feet.

DMR: Connect Systems CS800D PLUS.

Extra Class license — passed after two months of study.

First HF setup: Yaesu FT-891 with a Wolf River Coil, portable. First test worked 6 states and the Caribbean islands.

First POTA activation, followed by a permanent HOA-compliant setup: 100 watts HF through a Go2Antenna vertical, tucked along a fence line.

Daily SSB phone DX with the current shack setup regularly reaches Europe, the Caribbean, and South America.

Satellites (AMSAT)

FM satellites: Kenwood TH-D72A with an Elk antenna, handheld, tracking passes in real time.

Linear satellites: ICOM IC-9700 with an Arrow antenna, an FFpower unit with a Powerpole front-face mod, and an Android phone running the Look4Sat app for tracking.

Video demonstrations of both stations, and ongoing project videos, are on the AE4JC YouTube channel — see News for the running list.