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On The Cover: February 2004 |
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Ralph Fedor, K0IR, of Waite Park, Minnesota |
On the Cover Ralph Fedor, K0IR, of Waite Park, Minnesota, doesn’t let a little snow get between him and his antennas – he just fires up the John Deere 4WD tractor and clears a path to wherever he needs to go. Ralph lives out in the country on 25 acres, “where you can put up some antennas.” And that he has … you can see only a couple of his six towers on our cover photo. The tallest is a 190-foot high rotating tower, with a 4-element 40-meter beam on top, plus two stacked 6 element monobanders on 20 meters and two stacked 7 element monobanders on 10 meters. Another tower holds beams for 15 and 6 meters; another covers the WARC bands (12, 17 & 30 meters); and the last two give him some “redundancy” on 10, 15, 20 and 40! Comes in handy when he runs a multi/multi contest operation from the three Yaesu FT-1000Ds, one FT-1000MP MkV and the ICOM IC-756 Pro2 inside his shack! But Ralph, who’s a radiologist in nearby St. Cloud, MN, says he only “dabbles” in contesting. His real love is DXing, and especially DXpeditioning … he’s been on seven so far, all to Antarctic islands (he doesn’t want to leave that snow!), including two visits each to South Sandwich (VP8SSI & VP8THU) and South Georgia (VP8CBA & VP8GEO), plus 3Y0PI on Peter I Island, XR0Y from Easter Island and VK0IR from Heard Island. Ralph has been a ham since 1961 and made his first DXpedition in 1992. Why such a long wait to get started? “It was a case of finish your education, get your career started, finish raising your family,” explained Ralph, “then you can start thinking about the stuff you’ve been dreaming about for 30 years.” (Cover photo by Larry Mulvehill, WB2ZPI) |
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Click here to return to the February Highlights page. © Copyright 2004, CQ Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced or republished, including posting to a website, in part or in whole, by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher, CQ Communications, Inc. Hyperlinks to this page are permitted. |
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