KF4AX is currently located in the Appalachian mountains of north Georgia. Originally licensed as KB4CXD back in 1987 then N4IFJ and from Tech I took both the General and the Advanced on the same morning and went straight from Tech to Advanced. That was back in the days of "the Dragon Lady" which is what we called the female FCC agent that administered the exams, and she was not happy about me passing the General and the Advanced on the same day, but I just laughed and bounded down the stairs with my new ticket in hand. From there it was straight to International Radio Sales to purchase my brand-new Kenwood TS-430S station that I ran for many years.

I, along with Bob Forman N4CRP, now a silent key, used to own Southern Technologies Amateur Radio in Miami, FL. We established the first packet digipeater in So.Fla. on 220 MHz and we were the only Commodore computer repair facility in south Florida. I don’t miss much about Florida except for the .40/.00 2m repeater at 1100 feet up the channel 6 TV tower that served us from West Palm Beach all the way down to Key West and at times even into Nassau Bahamas. Any ham that has ever been to Miami surely recalls that ol’ "four-oh-double-oh" machine. Hurricane Andrew took down the 1800 foot tower that it lived on, and that’s when I left Miami. I wonder if it is back in action?

Current station is an ICOM 730 on battery-backed power into an MFJ Super-Tuner feeding an end-fed longwire at about 40 feet up a tree. Other gear includes a Radio Shack DX-300 genco receiver and a Bencher paddle and a HamKey HK5A. Last is an old Cobra 148 "Night Watch" to monitor REACT. Not exactly state-of-the-art equipment, but that’s part of the fun of this hobby. Anybody can slam down their plastic and plug in a $10K "wonder rig." I find it’s a little more entertaining to do it with some older gear.

Currently running a rather spartan station with an Icom IC-730 all-mode transceiver and a Realistic DX-300 general coverage receiver. I worked stations in Italy, Sweden, Austria & Canada during the first 2 hours of keying up the transmitter for the first time in almost 20 years.

The Icom 730 feeds a random longwire (about 60 foot give or take) through a modified MFJ Super Tuner II. In addition to the factory's integral 4:1 toroidal balun, I've added a homebrew toroidal impedance-matching transformer feeding the wire antenna output terminal. The wire runs out the window of the shack up to a tree southeast of the station. The station is well grounded to dual 9-foot-long copper-plated steel earthing electrodes driven deep into the infamous damp red clay of the Appalachians in Northeast Georgia.

Not many people know it but Dahlonega, GA was the site of the first "Gold Rush" in the United States, long before the California gold rush began. Dahlonega gold is unique in that it is one of the few places on earth where absolutely pure 24K gold occurs naturally. Gold is usually found mixed with silver, copper, etc., but here it is absolutely pure. Perhaps this is why the Cherokee Indians considered it their holiest lands. There are still 2 active gold mines operating here in Dahlonega today. I like to think all that gold in the ground helps my signal get out somehow !!!

That big tree over toward the right supports one end of my longwire.

This next shot shows the idyllic view out the window of my shack:

73!