Ria's Ham Shack

On August 19, at the invitation of John, W2HCB, President of The Great South Bay Amateur Radio Club (GSBARC) and EC/RO for the town of Babylon, NY , I visited the Fire Island Lighthouse to help them activate the lighthouse for International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend (ILLW). They have been an amazing and active club for many, many years and I was all too happy to visit. The lighthouse itself is an amazingly pretty sight to see with some of the most beautiful and absolutely pristine seashore in this area. I took a tour of the lighthouse, and climbed all the way to the top. I also met up with two of my YL friends - Caryn, KD2GUT and Salli, K2RYD. I operated SSB and CW and many were happy to work me. GSBARC absolutely rolled out the red carpet. They met me, shuttled me to the light from Robert Moses Field, and even gave me a personal tour of the lighthouse. The drive from NNJ wasn't too bad at all. I used to actually go out to Long Island quite a lot when I was a contract p...

One of the things I'd like to touch on here is that my opponent and his friends seem to think that the message that "contesters and DXers are elitists" is a winning strategy with the ham radio public. For the record, I am a very avid and active DXer and contester. I have 324 countries confirmed (326 including deleted), 9 bands DXCC including 160 meters and DXCC challenge at the 1500 level. I also have numerous contest wins, both on my own and on VHF with Andrea, K2EZ who owns and operates a Ford Explorer rover. Interestingly enough, my opponent is also a DXer and contester. In fact, he is even on the DXCC honor roll. This means that he is in the top 10% of DXers worldwide in terms of new countries worked. Wow. It takes a lot of dedication to do that. He's also a member of the Order of Boiled Owls of New York, a well known, but small contest club. So as it turns out, he's one of us, and in some respects more elite than I am. I sincerely don't get why he g...