My name is Eric Swanson. This site details my adventures in ham radio.
I've held an amateur radio licence since I was 12. I earned my Technician licence October 10th, 2002. My first callsign was KC8UWJ. I loved to tinker with electronics and I expected radios would be no different. But as a 12-year-old, I didn't have the funds to purchase a $300 handheld, and homebrew was above my skill level, so my radio licence went in a frame on the kitchen counter. EchoLink was about all I did in the ham radio world until coming to college in 2009.
W8YX, the University of Cincinnati's Amateur Radio Club, got me interested in ham radio again. In 2010, I bought my first radio, a Quansheng TG-UV2. It took a while to learn to program it, and it doesn't support DTMF, but it's a nice radio, with good audio and exceptional battery life.
In 2013, I decided it was time I get my General ticket and start some HF activity. I studied for my General and showed up for the test one Saturday morning. After I passed the General, the VEs suggested that I sit for the Extra as well. Why not, it's free. Well, I passed that one too. Once I got my new licence, I set out to get a low phonetic weight callsign, using the excellent tools at AE7Q.com and ended up with WI3G.
My interest in ham radio lately stems from my facination with all communication technologies. I love the idea that I can talk from my apartment to someone on the other side of the world with nothing but a bit of wire and the ionosphere. I'm also excited to start experimenting with various digital modes. Cheap RTL-SDR dongles have opened up a new world of receiving for me as well.