First a little Background         My first exposure to shortwave radio came in the late 1950’s. With the launch of Sputnik and the International Geophysical Year (IGY) science was all the rage and radio seemed like a neat place to start. My first piece of equipment was a Lafayette Explorer regenerative receiver. With this I could listen to local stations, foreign broadcast and ham radio signals.   In 1962 I became a licensed ham radio operator. My first station consisted of a Hallicrafters S-38E receiver, a Heathkit DX-40 transmitter and an inverted Vee antenna hanging out of the bedroom window. Later I upgraded and replaced this station with the Hallicrafters twins SX-140 and HT-40 transmitter which I used primarily on six meters.   Several years later after serving in the military, completing college and getting married, I returned to ham radio and set up a station using a Drake 2-C Receiver, a Drake 2NT transmitter and a Hy-Gain vertical. This station worked quite well on HF CW and then in the late 1970’s I bought my first HF transceiver a Kenwood TS-520SE at Universal Radio in Reynoldsburg Ohio, at that time just a short drive from our home then in Columbus.   After moving to Charlottesville the TS-520 was replaced with a Kenwood TS-850SAT. A tower with a Cushcraft A4 and a Carolina Windom soon made an appearance. In the early 1990’s I began to use ICOM HF transceivers. I returned from the Dayton Hamvention one year with a new IC-756. The pan adapter was a neat addition to operating. You could see where adjacent signals were and how active the band was. You could say it expanded my horizon. Over the years I have had other ICOM’s, most recently an ICOM 756 Pro III. All of the ICOM’s I have owned are still in use by others in the area.   The Current Station           The primary HF transceiver is a FlexRadio 6300. This radio was ordered at the 100th ARRL Convention in Hartford. It is so feature filled I must admit that I am still exploring this radio and have only tapped a small fraction of its capabilities. I get great reports. My first FlexRadio was a 1500 QRP transceiver. It didn’t take long to get hooked on the ease of use of this radio and the full feature nature of the operating system.   I have a Yaesu FT-847 which serves primarily as a VHF-UHF transceiver, it also serves as a back-up HF radio. There is a 20 element two meter beam and a dual band Diamond Collinear Antenna for 144/440. The station also features an ADI-247 for 220 MHz. This transceiver uses a Cushcraft 4 element beam.   The HF Antennas are a Sommers XP-706 which is a hybrid Yagi-Log Periodic design, a Carolina-Windom by Radio Works and a homebrew NVIS antenna for 60 meters. The 58’ Rohn tower is 130 feet away from the house so the coax run of 9913 and the rotator run is rather lengthy. The HF antennas terminate in a series of Alpha-Delta switches which allow me to connect them to whatever transceiver I wish to use.   System is powered by a set of Astron RS-35M Power Supplies that run through a West Mountain Power-Gate and a 100 Amp-Hour battery. The operating desk was designed and built by Mike K8RVR.