I bought my first Radio Amateur's Handbook in 1978. Somehow college, career, graduate school and starting a family put my rendevous with an amateur radio license off for another 18 years until the end of 1995. Since then this has been a most enjoyable and rewarding hobby.

The trip to Extra Class has been filled with the opportunity to manipulate my soldering iron deep inside the tiny recesses of amazingly miniature radios. I've plugged an endless series of geometry coordinates into antenna design software and made my share of trips to the hardware store for 500 ft spools of #12 THHN.

I've helped out in many public service events and organized two Field Days for W6TRW. The latter is all about good catering by the way. I've also enjoyed the opportunity to participate in welcoming new hams as an ARRL Volunteer Examiner.

At the moment, I find myself enjoying rag chewing as my favorite operating activity. I am particularly delighted by the emergence of the newest rag chewer's mecca, the HF digital modes. You'll find me on all bands calling CQ mostly using PSK31 and some MFSK and RTTY.

Not much of a CW man. I do contest work particularly on the low bands in the winter time (160m is fun) but my head thinks in full words and I've just never gotten into CW shorthand as used by amateurs. It hurts my head to listen to it. Would have tried CW keyboarding but with PSK31 around there's little point to it at the moment. So I stick to short structured contest exchanges for CW.

You'll also find me looking for casual SSB chats on 40, 17, 15 and 10 meters. I'm mobile driving up and down the California coast quite a bit. There's nothing like the pleasure of chatting with a new found friend in Japan looking at the same ocean from opposite ends and commenting on how the sun looks in the sky from both perspectives. That's at 60 mph on California's Pacific Coast Highway.

The opportunity to meet and interact with interesting people from all over the world has been the biggest reward so far. So I look forward to meeting you on the air or having our next chat down the log.

73 de Dennis Santiago, NB6I