[SFDXA] John Ellis NP2B - SK

[The Romagni's]

This one hits hard... I had the opportunity to operate twice from his old
station in KP2 alongside Bruce W4OV... John was a true host, he would get
real mad if we paid for anything... including the Cervezas (there is an
inside joke on this one!)... but he loved having folks at his station, and
went all in for all of his guests!

Steve
W4DTA

On Thu, Dec 5, 2024 at 12:05 PM Bill <bmarx at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I copied this from John's QRZ page. John was well known to SFDXA older
> members. He attended many meetings - Bill W2CQ
>
> https://www.qrz.com/db/NP2B
>
> Originally licensed in 1957 as K0MMI in Kansas City, I have held the calls
> W5RPI (Houston) and W4MRJ (Atlanta).
>
> My XYL (Jeanette - KB4XO, formerly NP2C) and I lived on the island of St.
> Croix in the US Virgin Islands from 1988 to 2012. We now live in a
> retirement community called "The Villages" in north central Florida. "The
> Villages" is a very large development with a population of over 130,000 and
> over 65,000 homes, numerous golf courses and is known to be the worlds
> largest golf cart community with golf carts being a very common mode of
> transportation. (go to YouTube, key in "villages golf carts" and you can
> see a corny video that was aired on CBS in May of 2011!)
>
> Getting back to ham hadio, my interests include building equipment, having
> schedules with friends, and working DX. My favorite phone band is 17
> meters. I was also the "Caribbean contact" in the WA2XSY 60M (5 MHz) pilot
> project. I also function as a Net Control for the Maritime Mobile Service
> Net on 14.300 and work as a Net Controller on the Hurricane Watch Net which
> is active during storms on 14.325 and 7.268 MHz.
>
> I also have interests in contests, but primarily in hosting them in a
> multi-single or multi-multi category. I have limited patience saying "5908
> - good luck in the contest", 5908 times in a 48 hour period by myself!
> There was a lot of that 5908 stuff (signal being 59 from zone 8 in the CQ
> Worldwide DX Contest) when we hosted contests in the Virgin Islands, but
> not up here in Florida where we are severely antenna restricted.
>
> I have served as a Director in the St. Croix Yacht Club (no, we don't have
> a yacht - never had one and never expect to have one!), President of the
> Kennehoochee Radio Club (Atlanta area), President of the Atlanta Radio Club
> (many - many years ago), President of the St. Croix Amateur Radio Club and
> currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Villages Amateur Radio
> Club. I also served eight terms (16 years) as the ARRL Section Manager for
> the Virgin Islands section. And, while not taking part in any of the
> aforementioned activities, I worked as a federal trustee, taking care of
> Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 bankruptcies in the Territory (St. Thomas, St.
> John and St. Croix) as well as Puerto Rico and occasionally in the States.
>
> Today, since moving to the Villages, lots of things have changed. The
> Villages is a very antenna restricted community, you won't find any towers
> or HF yagis here. Instead you will find people using antennas in the attic,
> motorized screwdriver type antennas and flagpoles. The flagpole seems to be
> quite popular using one of the new weatherproof autotuners at the base and
> an extensive ground radial system generally installed by the folks who put
> in the invisible dog fences. They have machines that can dig a very narrow
> trench in which they lay the radial wires, and then cover them up so next
> morning you'll never know anything ever happened!
>
> We have a couple of Tarheel 100HP (high power) screwdriver antennas
> mounted to the aluminum frame of the lanai in the back of the house. The
> frame is a rather large structure, well grounded and it forms a good ground
> plane for the verticals, and with some power, they work surprisingly well.
> But the secret to effective use of these antennas is to make sure they have
> a good counterpoise or ground plane. Without that, they won't work worth a
> toot! The ones we have are also black in color with flat black powder
> coated whips so unless you are looking for them and know where to look,
> you'll never see them from the street!
>
> I have written a number of "classic radio" articles for QST, but in the
> September 2017 issue, I wrote an article on the construction of a flagpole
> antenna. There is nothing special about the flagpole antenna I described
> except for the use of the acetal rod as the center insulator and for
> enhanced base support. That rod is tough, and you could damage a perfectly
> good truck by trying to break it!
>
> Jeanette did not particularly like the landscaping around the house, so in
> mid March of 2018 we had the front of the place "relandscaped" and I took
> the opportunity to finally install a flagpole of our own! We've got about
> 30 radials buried, ranging in length from 15 to 40 feet and it is installed
> right in the middle of the front lawn! Now, how's that for hiding an
> antenna in plain sight?! It works fine, certainly not like the antenna farm
> we had on St. Croix, but quite useable in this antenna restricted
> community. Not that much better than the Tarheel verticals which we still
> have up, which only reinforces my position on the absolute importance of a
> good counterpoise when using a conventional vertical antenna.
>
> The rest of the rig includes the Elecraft K3 line including the K3S
> transceiver, the KPA-500 power amp, the KAT-500 autotuner, the W2 wattmeter
> (used on the input of the amp) and the P3 panadapter. Jeanette also has a
> K3S at her desk and we have a Yaesu FT-897 that we use primarily on VHF,
> UHF and as a backup on HF with a Signalink computer interface for the
> digital modes.
>
> I plan to post photos of the antenna installation here, illustrating that
> amateur radio antennas can co-exist within communities with strong CCR's
> (covenants, conditions and restrictions).
>
> And for those of you in the States, please go to the ARRL website (
> arrl.org) and review the League's position on the Amateur Radio Parity
> Act. The act as written was far from perfect and is currently being
> "reformulated" for the lack of a better term for it. Once complete and
> hopefully with congressional approval and the President's signature, it
> should help insure that those of us who live in antenna restricted
> communities, at least have a reasonable chance of erecting useable outside
> antenna systems.
>
> Thank you for visiting my QRZ page.
> 73,
> John
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