Hello!

Hello, and welcome to my radio blog. My name is Mike, amateur callsign W7MVG.

I started this blog as a place to keep track of my adventures in radio. I was first licensed in 2002 as a no-code technician. After taking a 15-ish year break from radios, during the covid lock-downs I started getting back into it. I upgraded to general in 2023 and then to extra in 2024.

My radio interests include digital modes, POTA/SOTA, building antennas and equipment, and just trying to get on the air more in general. My current setup is a Xeigu G90 into a home-brew 27′ end fed random wire that’s strung between my back porch light and fence. For V/UHF I have an Icom 2720h into an N9TAX dual band slim-jim hanging in the corner of my office. On my desk I also have an all-mode Yaesu FT690RII for 6m but I do not have an antenna for that at the moment so it just sits idle. Finally to round out the shack I have an Icom 270h with a mag-mount antenna sitting on a cookie sheet, that’s controlled by a raspberry pi, that’s set up as an APRS 2 way I-Gate. As you can probably tell I need to get up on the roof and install some proper antennas one of these days.