My father David Lindley W4TR is the one that got me interested in ham radio by just me being around it my entire life. Watching him talk to people all over the world and putting up towers, antennas, doing all sorts of projects to being involved in the local clubs and talking on the repeater in the 80s, he did it all. I remember when grown up building crystal radio sets and playing with the all in one kits from Radio Shack, I even had a crystal radio that was built inside of a pen!

I finally got my license when I was twenty three, and out of school, however the rise of the internet at the time caused me to get more interested in computers again, and I put all of my interest into building custom systems and overclocking which kept my mind out of amatuer radio. Once I came back into the hobby around 2006 I’ve been into it pretty strong. I upgraded to a general class ticket around that time, and after being on HF a short time I realized after chasing DX and seeing most of the action on the parts of the bands I wasn’t allowed that I needed to upgrade again to Extra.

I started on HF mostly doing digital modes for a few years, working a lot of contacts every night, and every RTTY contest that came around. Eventually my interest turned to software defined radios, and I bought a used Flex SDR-1000 that opened my eyes to the possibilities of SDR operation, and forever has tied me to a panadapter of some sort. I’ve built a few Softrock kits, and at this point most of my interest is tied to HF operation. I’m currently working on obtaining five band DXCC after having a strong start last year at pursuing DXCC. I made a goal to achieve it with only contacts from my current call, and after eight months confirmed my 100th contact on LOTW.

I also enjoy talking to locals on the FM repeaters, Dstar repeaters and even DMR. North Carolina has been a great state if you like Dstar, and now DMR. Digital repeaters cover the state from one end to the other and GARA has one of the first Dstar repeaters operating in the area.The day it went live in 2009, and we had over twenty people checking in on the machine who had been waiting for it to come on the air in just a few minutes after the switch was flipped.