Wes Irish's Amateur Radio Page

I got my first license in 1975 while growing up in New York State. I still hold the very first callsign that I was issued when I passed the Novice exam. (Well, not exactly. I was issued WN2CRQ, which automatically changed to WA2CRQ when I upgraded from the Novice to General.) Since then I have worked my way up through every license class and now hold an Amateur Extra Class license.

I operate both HF and VHF and have set-ups for mobile, portable, and fixed operation. I use VHF on a daily basis, mostly to keep in touch with my wife Peggy, KF6NEY. We have VHF rigs in all of our regular vehicles as well as a couple of rigs set up at home. Given our location (on a hill in Redwood City) we are able to work simplex between home and mobile virtually anywhere in the Bay Area.

For HF operation I have a shack at home as well as a set-up for my motorhome for use during our various vacations and field day. The motorhome rig is an ICOM-706 Mark II which also doubles as a second rig in the shack when it's not in use in the motorhome. I have typically used Hamsticks or various makeshift longwires while operating out of the motorhome but I have recently purchased an ICOM-AH4 tuner for the motorhome that I intend to use with a homebrew vertical and/or longwire. The main rig in the Shack is a Ten-Tec Omni-VI Plus.

I like to operate CW. On a good day I can almost handle 35 wpm, on a bad day maybe 15 wpm. I usually operate around 20-25 wpm. I don't get on HF as often as I would like these days; it can often be a month or two between operating HF but I try to do it often enough to keep at least some of the rust off. When I am on HF you can often find me on the lower end of 40 or 20 meters during the evening. I also like to operate on the other HF bands, including the WARC bands, as time and conditions permit.

For HF I have two main antennas, a Cushcraft R8 vertical (6 - 40 meters, including WARC bands) mounted on the roof, and a 3 element tri-bander on a crank-up tower. The tower also holds a 5/5 element dual-band 2m/440 vertical beam and a VHF / UHF dual-band vertical. In the up position the antennas are between 44 and 56 feet. I normally leave the tower in the full down position. I also have another roof mounted vertical for 6m, 2m, and 440 mhz operation.

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