Amateur Radio
I am an amateur radio operator. My call sign is WL7RO. It's been a while since I was active, but my interests are primarily with digital modes, things such as APRS and satellites. I only have a Technician-class license, but I haven't had much of a reason to get a better one, since this license allows me to do all sorts of digital and satellite work on the 2-meter bands. Though I have an HF radio below, I use it for reception only.
My radios
ICOM IC-706mkIIg
This is a nice little multi-band rig. I primarily use this for monitoring the HF bands, but my apartment leaves much to be desired as far as antenna placement, so I usually don't get to hear too much.
Kenwood TM-D700
I bought the D700 with the intent of doing APRS work with it. In practice, when it's on, it's just beaconing. I used to have it connected up to a computer to track my position, and intended on integrating the message features with the web site, but I lost interest in that.
Kenwood TH-D7A
This complements the D-700A. It's an APRS-capable HT suitable for carrying around. I occasionally put this in my car and connect it to a GPS receiver to beacon my position. Normally someone else in the area relays my position over the Internet, but I have used my D-700A base station to capture this information and record it on my PC also.
I wrote the original THD7.pm Perl module, for remotely controlling the TH-D7 over a serial port.
Kenwood TH-78A
This was my very first HT, bought in 1992 when I was ~14. I still think the design is neat and compact. Unfortunately, the battery is completely dead and I haven't tried looking for a replacement. It won't even power on with the AC adapter. A project for another day...
One nifty thing about the 78A is that one of the accessories included an SSTV attachment that had a camera and an LCD screen. This allowed me to take SSTV snapshots and transmit them over the air. I've used this in the past, in conjunction with one of my base receivers and my PC, to receive SSTV images and relay them to the web site. It took a lot of work, but it was pretty cool to play with. The only drawback was the range, which I suspect had more to do with my setup at home than the HT.
Icom IC-R3
This is an amazing little hand-held general-coverage receiver. What makes it amazing isn't the fact that it's small and covers everything up through around 2.4GHz. It's amazing because it has an LCD screen and is capable of TV reception, and not just broadcast reception.
My interests
As above, my interests are primarily in the digital modes, satellite work, and software DSP. My skills in those areas are actually quite weak, but you don't need skill to have an interest, right?
GNU Radio
The GNU Radio project is amazing. We finally have PC hardware that is capable of doing things that we could only dream of doing with radios before. We now have the ability to digitize entire bands, in real-time. With modest PC hardware, we can demodulate multiple independent signals in completely different parts of the band at the same time. And since the demodulation is entirely in software, devices could trivially reconfigure themselves to work with different types of signals as needed. Imagine a device that could be a GPS receiver, participate in 802.11 wireless networks, make GSM calls, receive ATSC HDTV and act like an additional handset to your cordless phone at home (many of these at the same time). Cool stuff. Lots of potential.