Yes, there really is a person in our cover photo this month! If you look real closely, you'll see a red dot about halfway up the tower. That's Dave Siddall, K3ZJ, and the 90-foot tower is one of three at his Romney, West Virginia contesting QTH, which Dave says he bought specifically for ham radio (he actually lives in Great Falls, Virginia). It's home to a pair of stacked 15-meter monobanders. A 70-foot tower holds 10 and/or 20-meter monobanders (depending on where we are in the sunspot cycle), and a 48-foot tower supports a TH-7 tribander. The key here isn't tower height, says Dave, but the fact that all of the towers sit on top of a 2,340-foot ridge, looking down in all directions (except north, where the ground stays level for a few hundred feet before starting to drop).

"Because of the height," he says, "anything above about 35 feet works very well." Translation of "very well" … Since 1988, Dave has held the 8th call area single band record for both 10 and 15-meter SSB in the CQ World Wide DX Contest.

Dave says his main passion in ham radio is contesting and the propagation and antenna analyses that go into designing a winning station, adding that he has spent a lot of time doing terrain analysis and getting the antennas positioned just right for the best takeoff angles (which, he notes, vary band-by-band). "Station design and installation is probably as big a factor for me as getting on and operating it," says K3ZJ.

When he's not contesting, Dave is practicing communications law. He spent many years with the FCC, where he held several high-ranking positions, and served as Legal Advisor to Commissioner Susan Ness from 1994 until his retirement in 1998. He is currently with a large private law firm in Washington, DC. (Cover photo by Larry Mulvehill, WB2ZPI)