WB4BYR Ham Radio
From the "ham" capital of the world!
WB4BYR hatched in 1966 in the unheated and uncooled garage of the family home on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. My first Technician Class rig was a Heathkit Two'er that had been modified to incorporate a relay in place of the transmit/receive switch on that particular model. The Two'er fed a 16 element (4 elements in-plane) (4-high) dipole beam antenna barely 15 feet above the ground. I was at least the 3rd Two'er owner. It was purchased for about $75, a lot of money in 1967, from an apprentis at NASA's launch and tech facility at Wallops Island, VA. I was a 19 year old summer intern in EICS, NASA's Experimental Instrument Construction Section, my first of 3 great summer jobs in the embryonic space program prior to having to go out & work for a living upon graduation from engineer- ing school at the University of Virginia. While at UVA, I was a DJ at WUVA, the stud- ent radio station at the University, and at WESR, the Eastern Shore of Virginia's first AM/FM radio station. I've done a bit of public speak- ing since then, mostly as an MC at various affairs, introducing such diverse characters as Congressmen and UFO researchers. Yep, been there, done that, never saw one, don't want to, either! UFO's, that is! Upon graduation, there was little interest in any radio, and my relocation "inland" virtually ended any hopes of the great over-water skip that I had enjoyed to the northern coastal states in the '60's with the Twoer. Ham radio would lie dormant in me until 2006 when I dis- covered that I no longer needed 13 WPM to pass the General Class examination. I studied for the General during a Mexico vaca- tion and passed it a couple weeks later. Finally I got nudged by WTRA, the Western Tidewater Radio Association to study for the Amateur Extra Class license in the spring of 2010. Passed with flying colors and am now enjoying the extra bandwidth. WB4BYR is comfortably shacked near Battery Park, a "suburb" of Smithfield, VA, a quaint little town which bills itself as the "ham" capital of the world. Those hams grow on pigs, however, and are not to be confused with us smooth characters who use opposable thumbs to hold a mic or bang out Morse code with a paddle. Smithfield is also the home of St. Lukes Church, the oldest Protestant Church in North America. We are sited next door to the town limits of Smithfield. This village has been around since before Ben Franklin invented electricity :-) Or was that Al Gore? Battery Park is the site of the first known customs house in Virginia. And as the name would imply, a gun battery ex- isted there during one of the more promi- nent battle eras of the VA Commonwealth's history. Battery Park sits along the banks of the beautiful Pagan River which feeds the historic James River just before it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. So much for today's geography lesson. When Don's not on the air ... or IN the air, yes ... Don is an instrument rated pilot, he prefers to be near the site of the first powered manned flight in Kill Devil Hills NC. To pay for his hobby, Don owns and runs Hanover Technical Sales, Inc., a viable wholesale distributor of electrical test and measurement instruments.
Hanover specializes in hi-accuracy equipment, software and services which empower in- dustry, utilities, government, military, institutional and commercial sites to re- duce energy costs, & improve power quality and system/personnel safety. Label
and wire marking equipment and supplies, and hand-held electrical and electronic test equipment lead our prod. line. Our custom- ers for some of our products are found around the country, and some of our customers can be found around the globe. Sometimes, they are even above it, well above, believe it or not, but that's of- ten as not a matter we don't discuss. As for Don, he has a solid background of nearly 45 years in the electrical industry, starting as a field sales engineer with Westinghouse Electric. He later joined the sales and marketing management ranks in low voltage circuit breakers, then on to programmable controls before becoming North American sales and marketing manager for a high voltage test systems manufac- turer. He held a couple of related positions elsewhere in the electrical in- dustry prior to founding Hanover Group, the predecessor to Hanover Technical Sales. His insights (and opinions) into the elec- trical world have been published in trade and engineering journals including EC&M magazine. Don has always been an outspoken opponent of electric utility deregulation and feels that recent events have more than proven him right. He also is honored with one successful patent disclosure while at Westinghouse. At night, you can most often find him on 20 meters contributing to a pileup or trying to create one of his own. The station presently in- corporates one or more Kenwood TS-830S transceivers, and they are feeding a host of baLanced coiL dipoLe antennas, both vertical as well as horizontal. These improved coiL dipoles are of Don's design. He didn't in- vent the coil, and he didn't invent the di- pole, but he sure made it better. You talk about a bear of an antenna nest, there is even a steel beam that runs below them in the garage just to make things even worse. Don's first General Class contact was on the Isle of Crete off the coast of Greece, one that he's especially proud of! (Thanks Mike!) As for coiL dipoLes, Don is sold on them for such situations as his. He has no complaints about getting 59 SSB reports from Europe on 100 watts pumped into an attic mounted, inverted trough-shaped dipole radiator built starting with a slinky toy. Heard enough about Don and ham radio for a while? You can learn more about Hanover and it's cutting edge products by clicking just below on "Hanover".
HANOVER Technical Sales, Inc.
EMAIL: sales@hanovertechnical.com
WB4BYR Amateur Radio
Same Call Since Day One!
Amateur Extra Class since April 2010
Original call sign holder for nearly 50 years!
SMITHFIELD, VIRGINIA 23430
Latitude: 36.974575� N (36� 58' 28" N)
Longitude: 76.617301� W (76� 37' 2" W)
Gridsquare: FM16rx
Timezone: GMT-5 (EST)
Area code: 757
County: Isle of Wight
ITU zone: 8
CQ zone: 5
US callsign region: 4
The voice behind the mic
Don Lovett - WB4BYRLatest Rig:
Kenwood TS-690S
MFJ 945E Antenna Tuner
AT-450 internal tuner coming soon!
20 - 17 - 15 - 12 - 10 meter Double BazookaMain Rig:
Kenwood TS-830S
MFJ 945E Antenna Tuner
AT-250 Automatic Antenna Tuner
20 Meter baLanced coiL dipoLeSecondary Rig:
Kenwood TS-830S
MFJ 945E Antenna Tuner
20 Meter baLanced coiL dipoLeBackup Rig:
Kenwood TS-530
MFJ 945E Antenna Tuner
20 Meter baLanced coiL dipoLe2 Meter Rig:
Kenwood TS-700S
No Antenna Tuner
J-Line antennaOther Antennas
40 meter baLanced coiL dipoLe
10 meter wire dipole
20 meter wire dipole
20 meter vertical center fed coiL
10/12/15/17/20 meter CondoBusterAll antennas are in a junky second story attic
over the garage. Talk about a lot of metal
(and each other!)
to intefere with their radiation patterns!FINALLY! A picture of the shack! CLICK HERE
OUR ANTENNA OF CHOICE! 20 Meter baLanced coiL dipoLe
Click Here!
WB4BYR's own design baLanced coiL dipoLe
.
WE NOW HAVE FERRITE CORES!
YOU need ferrite cores! Here's why!
