Why W9ACW.com?
meta
Why W9ACW?
The name of the site has some history behind it.
W9ACW was originally my grandfather's amateur-radio call sign. He became a licensed amateur operator in 1939 and remained involved with radio throughout his life, operating HF phone, CW and RTTY and participating in contests. He operated first from Huntington, Indiana, and later for many years from Brazil, Indiana.
I was a child when he passed away, but many years later I became an amateur-radio operator myself and eventually acquired his old call sign.
So W9ACW represents more to me than simply the identifier the FCC assigned to my station. It is a connection between generations and to a tradition of experimenting with technology that began in my family long before I was born.
Building things is only half the fun
I've always enjoyed understanding how things work, rather than simply using them. Sometimes that means restoring or modifying old equipment. Sometimes it means designing something new. Other times it means taking several existing technologies and making them do something their manufacturers probably never anticipated.
Radio, technology and the road
Amateur radio will probably make up a large portion of the technical material here, but it won't be the only subject.
My 80 Series Toyota Land Cruiser is another continuing project and also provides a way to combine several interests. Radio equipment, antennas, electrical systems, navigation, networking, camping equipment and vehicle modifications all become much more interesting when the goal is to make them work together reliably while traveling somewhere well beyond the pavement.
So expect some mixture of ham radio, electronics, computers, networking, fabrication, 3D printing, Land Cruisers, overlanding, camping, repair work, and whatever other technical rabbit hole happens to look interesting at the time.
There won't be a rigid schedule or even a rigid definition of what belongs here.
That's intentional.
If it helps someone else, even better
The Internet has been an extraordinary resource for nearly every project I've undertaken. Countless times I've found an old web page, forum post, schematic, photograph, GitHub repository, or someone's carefully documented experiment containing exactly the obscure bit of information I needed.
I'd like W9ACW.com to contribute a little bit back to that pool of knowledge.
If something documented here gives another amateur an idea, helps someone repair an old radio, saves a few hours troubleshooting a problem, provides a starting point for a better design, or inspires somebody to build a project of their own, then publishing it was worthwhile.
And if you build one of my projects and improve upon it, I'd like to hear about that too.
That's really what this site is about:
Build things. Experiment. Go places. Get on the air. Document what you learn. And leave enough information behind for the next person to take it a little further.
73,
W9ACW