About

I’m Nic, KF0WWR, in South Minneapolis, MN, usually somewhere within grid square EN34. I passed my Technician and General exams in one sitting and was licensed on April 1, 2026. I’m working toward Extra now; we’ll see how that goes.

How I got here

I started out on BBSes as a kid, dialing in to boards across my area code and running my own: DARK KNiGHT BBS, which eventually became FidoNet node 1:282/3043 and later 1:282/1050, in the early 90s. I wrote Pascal (ProBoard PEXs required it) and BASIC, and paid for the BBS phone line(s) with lawn-mowing money.

I wanted to be on the radio back then too. I loaded up my wagon with an old 12 volt car battery and two CB radios and wheeled it around the neighborhood, which made for lots of fleeting conversations with people driving by on the I-35 stretch near my childhood home. The mowing budget didn’t stretch far enough to get into amateur radio, though, not to mention that “the code” was massively intimidating. It took a while, but I finally made it here.

The same thing that pulled me toward BBSes years ago pulls me toward radio now: arbitrarily long-distance, low-bandwidth communication.

On the air

Most of my HF time right now is spent on FT8. I like it because it’s teaching me a lot about propagation: watching which bands open, when, and to where. SSB and CW are next on the list.

Locally, I check in to VHF/UHF nets around the Twin Cities, and I’m a member of SMARTS, the Southwest Metro Amateur Radio Transmitting Society.

I don’t have specific operating goals at the moment. I’m mostly enjoying learning as I go.

Station

One of those antennas is a 66’ EFHW I built with help from AD0DB.

Off the air

My day job is software engineering for my small consulting firm, and lately I’ve been working on radio-related software projects with AI. Expect some of that to show up here.

QSL

LoTW and/or QRZ Logbook preferred; paper is welcome, and no return postage is needed. If you take the time to mail me a card, I will respond, or at least attempt to. Please give me time.

If you get a card from me out of the blue, don’t feel like you need to respond. I send QSL cards to random QSOs to help my 6 year old learn about radio and snail mail. Keep it, throw it away, or respond. Either way, thanks for playing along.

73 de KF0WWR