New member introduction

[4WDHammer]

Hi Everyone. I just joined a few minutes ago and want to introduce myself. My name is Tom and the callsign is KD6TR. I’ve been a ham for 16 years and an off-road enthusiast even longer. The home QTH is wherever I happen to hook up. Actually, we own a home in Ramona, CA but I retired last August, rented the house, and we moved into our motorhome and became full time RVers. We travel the country towing my 2004 Jeep Wrangler Sport. The Jeep is fully set up for off-roading and worldwide communications. It Has ARB Air Lockers front and rear, a Pro-Comp lift, Sway bar disconnects, and BF Goodrich Mud Terrain tires. For communications, it has all amateur frequencies from 80 meters through 70 centimeters as well as CB. We spend our time volunteering as campground hosts for various agencies of the Federal Government. We are currently located at Hyatt Lake in Southern Oregon managing 24 campsites for BLM. We have been here since June 1st and will be here until September. For the three months prior to this, we were campground hosts for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Stanislaus River in Northern California. We spend most of our free time four wheeling on the logging roads up here and operating ham radio. Last fall, and next fall, we will be hosting in the Mojave National Preserve for the U.S. National Park Service where we manage two campgrounds with a total of 65 campsites. The Mojave National Preserve has only about 30 miles of paved roads and well over 1,100 miles of off-road trails! There are more that don’t appear on the maps and we’ve been on most of them. Within the 1.6 million acres contained in the preserve is 134 miles of the Mojave Road, a major wagon road for freight back in the 19th century. Last year, I conducted guided tours on the Mojave Road for visitors and I expect to do the same this year. Prior to retiring, I worked as a medical professional. In addition to ham radio and four-wheeling, hobbies include gourmet cooking, home brewing, (beer, not radio equipment), and photography. My wife is an accomplished artist. We have two children both of whom are licensed hams. Our son, Mike, lives in Escondido and is KE6EUM. Our daughter, Rene’e lives in San Marcos and is KI6BLH. I learned about this group while I was gassing up the Jeep in Escondido about a month ago. One of your members noticed the Jeep and the antennas (4) with the ham license plate and approached me. He gave me a OAUSA card and invited me to join the Thursday evening net. We were only in town for a couple of weeks and I didn’t have the opportunity to check in at the time. Now I am located 800 miles away but I notice on the card that Keller Peak is an Echolink machine. Can I check in and join the net via Echolink from my location here? If so, I would like somebody to give me the node number for Keller Peak. I regularly use Echolink to keep in touch with the kids through the Escondido Amateur Radio Society (EARS) repeater at 146.88. Next fall, I would like to invite everyone out to Mojave for some fun 4-wheeling and camping. It’s only 200 miles from San Diego and the fall weather is great in the desert.

[cruiserlarry]

Welcome to OAUSA !!!

I am envious of your current lifestyle - I'm lucky to have weekends off now...

Look forward to meeting you out in the Mojave this coming fall...keep us posted on your arrival.

[BlueFJ]

Welcome, Tom! If you mean you were gassing up at the Costco Station off of Scripps Poway Parkway, that would have been me that gave you the "club" calling card. Either way, welcome! With your experience in wheeling and ham radio, you'll make a great addition to our ranks! As far as joining the Net with EchoLink goes,
you should be able to connect from any location with a good Internet connection. Sorry, I don't know the node number, but the repeater web site (http://www.kpra.net) says "Echolink users use KE6TZG-R to talk & listen to our repeater". Glad you decided to sign-up!

[BorregoWrangler]

Hi there, Tom and welcome to OAUSA! I have a few retired family members who also travel with their RV and Jeep now. Sounds like a lot of fun!

Wheelin' and camping in the Mojave sounds great. I'd love to get out there again.

[OLLIE]

Wow... I'm jealous. I've often told the wife we should just live in an RV. Not happening... Glad to have you aboard. Let us know when you're in the area.

[salad_man]

Welcome, awesome you get to travel and volunteer at the same time.

[DaveK]

Tom:

Great to have you join us.

The answer to your question about checking into the nets on echolink, is YES. I will have to either let one of our echolink users supply that info or I will dig it up and post it here shortly.

Welcome aboard!

[DaveK]

Tom:

On the echolink question. Once you open echolink on your computer, find the locations directory and after narrowing the selections down to CA, select KE6TZG-R. You should be good to go at this point. See you on the net!