Amateur radio has been a hobby of mine since 2018. I got my Technician license for fun, then upgraded all the way to Amateur Extra in 2019. Later that year, I was also granted my vanity callsign W9ZK with the help of my friend W9DX, who I met early at a local club.
You’ll want to check my QRZ page for more up-to-date details, but I’ll give you a rundown of my activities.
Logbook
I use Cloudlog as my primary logger. This means you can check when I’m active by going to https://log.zachkline.us/ and seeing if I’m actively making contacts! Everything on my Cloudlog is synced to LoTW for awards. I have QSL cards and I’ll send them out for rare contacts, but I’ll also reply with a QSL card if you send me one first.
Sometimes, especially if I’m doing a POTA activation where I’m out of cell service, I’ll be actively making contacts that aren’t immediately showing up on my Cloudlog server. All those contacts are eventually backlogged into Cloudlog with the correct timestamps when I have an internet connection again, but that’s not always immediate.
Portable operations
I haven’t really settled down in life yet. Because of this, I’ve designed my entire station around portability. I prefer HF over VHF/UHF or satellite work, though I’ve dipped my toes in each.
My primary station is a Yaesu FT-891, a BioennoPower 12 Ah battery, and whatever antenna I can get a hold of. Sometimes that’s a random wire tuned with my MFJ-945E, sometimes it’s my Comet HFJ-350M hamstick, and sometimes it’s just a speaker wire dipole hoisted up on a fishing pole.
I’m not a big fan of the FT# digital modes for everyday operation, so I spent most of my time on SSB. CW is on my to-do list, but I haven’t found enough time to sit down and learn it yet.
I do a lot of POTA when I can. Being in 9-land is good for that. Other times, I just try to set up in public spaces and expose people to the hobby. I’m not an avid contester or anything, I just like to ragchew, talk with my buddies, and have fun.
Other activities
My EDC handheld is the Yaesu FT-3DR, though I have a few others. I always try to beacon APRS when I can, but I’m often out of APRS range. I’m almost always scanning through the standard calling frequencies for 2m/70cm, as well as local repeaters, and sometimes even FRS frequencies.
I like satellites, though I’m hardly ever able to actually work them. I’ll listen in to passes as they occur, but I’ve only ever successfully been able to work SO-50 once. I made 2 contacts from my FT-60 before the battery died. It was a sad day.
I’ve decoded a lot of SSTV from the ISS. You can see those decodes on my Nextcloud instance here.
I’ve also decoded a handful of NOAA weather satellite images. Those decodes are also on my Nextcloud instance here. It also includes full audio recordings of the passes if you want to decode them yourself to get the full data stream, including non-visible light images.