I got active again in fall of 2008 after nearly 20 years off the air. I first did some contesting from W8UM—the club station at the University of Michigan—and then from N8CC. During a 4-month layoff from work, I finally got back on the air from home in the fall of 2009 using the antenna pictured above, an Outbacker vertical clamped to my gate.

In what now seems like another lifetime, I had been active on HF (phone, and some CW and RTTY with a Model 15 Teletype® machine), local VHF and UHF repeaters, and satellites in roughly the OSCAR 6 through OSCAR 13 era. Nowadays my activities are primarily contesting (CW and RTTY more than phone).

During my hiatus, I still managed to go to the Dayton Hamvention and to the AMSAT Space Symposium and Annual Meeting nearly every year.

A: Note that the feedline goes up to the shack. The highest point of the antenna (B) is lower than the shack.

B: The perspective of the camera makes the antenna look higher than it actually is.

C: "Wander lead" for bandswitching. The Outbacker covers 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10 meters, and I've also used it on 6 meters with an antenna tuner.

D: Bandswitch access port.

E: Incoming QSL receptacle.

F: Steerable ground plane.

G: Windows® operating system.

Not visible in picture: aluminum-sided neighbor's house about 15 feet south of antenna (towards the left in the picture).

There's not much room on an approximately one-eighth acre suburban lot. On my lot in particular, there's a utility pole (yellow) in the northeast corner; power, telephone and cable (red) running north and south across the back; power for street lighting (red) out at the curb; the electrical drop for my house (red) across the north side of the yard; and the neighbor's electrical drop running diagonally across my yard. I ended up putting the antenna (green) where it was most convenient for switching bands!

Thanks Google Maps for the image. Here's Bing's Bird's Eye view:

The amazing thing is that I'm able to work DX with this antenna and 25 watts on RTTY and PSK, and 100 watts on CW and phone!

Check here to see if you're in my log as of my last upload to Club Log: