I married the love of my life in June of 1982. We had been together since 1976 in college, and we moved to our first house (located in West Warwick, RI) in January of 1984 (the same time that Apple was introducing the Macintosh).
A house of my own meant better antennas were now possible. While I had dreams of antennas on top of a tower, that wasn’t to be. But at the time I had been fully bitten by the packet radio craze and setup a rather high power digital station on 2-meters that served as a relay link between hams in the north and south of RI. Other digital modes like Amtor had started up on the HF bands, and I messed with that, and continued to work with the Satellites.
I did a lot of listening to AO-10, and managed a few contacts by keying a dual band VHF/UHF Kenwood FM rig on the uplink, and using a 2-meter converter tied to my IC-740 on the downlink. I also managed a contact with one of the shuttle missions before the STS-51 Challenger explosion in early 1986, and after that with a ham abord the Russian MIR.
My father retired back to Alabama in the mid-80’s, and we kept weekly schedules on CW and SSB ever since he moved. He bought a Kenwood TS-440 right after his move and used it for years. I decided to join him on the Kenwood bandwagon and bought a TS-850SAT around 1994.
Kenwood TS-850SAT
