This is the number one hobby for me. I received my first license at the age of 12 in 1979. Since then I have been quite active working different contests and chasing DX. I work contests just for fun quite often at home nowdays. All my more serious contest efforts have been in multiop categories (like www.oh2u.com). CW is the mode I enjoy operating the most and short QSOs are my cup of tea there.

You might be able to spot the tip of the 40m Yagi element in the picture above. As my house is on top of a ridge I was not able to fit the tower in the same picture. The self supporting tower is 16 meters high and the surrounding terrain is about 18 meters below providing enough of effective height for the setup. Below is a separate shot of the antennas:

The latest addition to my setup is a remote station for 80/160 meters with TS-480 and remoterig RRC-1258MkII. I hope to improve my DXCC count there with the vertical antennas from now on. At home I am currently running with the following equipment: Elecraft K3 , ACOM1000 Amp, 3-el SteppIr, 2-el for 40m (JP7-2 Shorty by Finnish Antenna)and OCF Dipole for 80/160m. The tower used to be loaded as vertical for 80 meters using a half sloper mounted at 22 feet to get 50 ohm resistance. I have replaced that setup this summer with a 40m long Inverted L antenna that I can run on both 160 and 80 meters.

Station automation is realised with microHAM's StationMaster (it is really a gem!). I am also using the LP-PAN adapter to have a band scope alongside with the K3. After having one (I had a IC-756Pro3) it is very hard to live without - I like to see what is going on on the bands. CW skimmer adds even more fun to the setup and with WinTelnetX it is easy to combine skimmer and DXtelnet spots into one stream. .

My favourite softwares are Win-test for contesting, DX4WIN for LoTW updates and DXing, DX Atlas for Grayline and microHAM SW of cource for Station Master and microKeyer. I also use some other SW quite frequently like: Skimmer aggregator to upload what CW Skimmer receives, VOACAP online for propagation forecasts and K3_EZ to restore different audio EQ settings. In addition it is worth mentioning the miniVNA to analyze e.g. antenna and filter characteristics.

Direct QSL (SASE) or LoTW are ok.

73 de Kari, OH2XX