Hi! I'm Larry and I live in Sandusky Ohio.

I grew up in Sandusky but moved to Columbus for 4 years and then to Chicago to work as an engineer at a 50 Kw radio station. An opportunity to work for IBM became available and I started a whole new career! Upon retiring, I moved back to Sandusky for the "quiet life".

I have 2 hobbies, pc's and amateur radio, and they keep me busy. Computers and Software Defined Radio's are the perfect marriage. I can be found most mornings on 80 meters, 3660 khz, having coffee and starting the day with some radio friends.

W8ER Station

I am using an Anan 7000DLE or a Flex 6400M transceiver. Either transceiver can drive an old L4B or a solid state EB500 amplifier. Thetis, DeskHPSDR and SmartSDR run on either a homebuilt Intel i9 that serves as my shack desktop using Linux Mint or Windows 10.

My selection of microphones includes an Electrovoice RE-320 or a Shure SM7B into a Symetrix 528e and that supplies the radios with transmit audio. The transceivers send receive audio to a Symetrix 420 20 watt amplifier and it drives a pair of JBL bookshelf speakers on a shelf right above my desk.

Antennas

There is a 65 foot Rohn 25 tower located 250 feet behind my house and 2 runs of 7/8 inch hardline running underground to the tower. My antennas are wire dipoles, each trimmed for the frequencies that I normally use.

Computers

There are 2 main desktop computers at W8ER, a homebrew Intel i9 and an i5 driving 3 desktop Samsung monitors. They both use Asus motherboards and each has 32G of high speed RAM. For storage each uses plug in 500G SATA SSDs. This allows me to swap Operating Systems and test software with ease. I'm using Linux Mint and Windows 10 or 11 and I can swap in other drives with other Operating Systems like LMDE7, Ubuntu, Debian or ...

Intel NUC's

A computer that has fascinated me since it's introduction is the Intel NUC. I have several, all networked together. Intel has ended producing NUC's and sold all rights to Asus, a huge disappointment for me. NUC's are fascinating tiny little computers that do a great job and are very reliable but the newer ones have plastic cases instead of metal ones and they aren't quite the quality that the Intel ones were. The Asus support isn't quite that offered by Intel.'

Important Links

Below are links to web sites or software that I have found and use. If you have any questions or comments, please shoot me an email at [email protected].