London Amateur Radio Club

Home	News	Beginner? Become a HAM	Club Info Join Up	Club Events	Operating Information
Public Service	Buy and Sell	SIGS, Online Group	Links	Search this site	Site Map

Feb 9, 2006 Meeting
"Hamming with Hammond"
with Gary Hammond

                       

LARC President and Gary              Gary and Club Executive

The Feb 9, 2006 meeting featured "Hamming with Hammond" with Gary Hammond. It was a very interesting talk full of stories with insight into the dx world. Gary showed a picture of the 5 filing cabinets that show his collection of over 100,000 qsl cards, sorted into alphabetical order.

Garry Hammond, VE3XN, is a shortwave enthusiast from Listowel, Ontario. A retired secondary school geography teacher, he is also a world traveler and an accomplished photographer. VE3XN is more than just a callsign. He is radio-active on 9 HF bands from 6 to 160 meters. When the bands are poor, you can find him QSL'ing his own activity or that of the Microlite Penguins DXpeditions.

Garry continues to actively pursue DX . . . he is in the top 200 of the world's DX'ers in the DXCC Challenge Award; the top 25 in the world for the Islands on the Air Award and the top 10 of CQ magazine's WPX Honour Roll. He is highly involved in collecting Antarctic bases, lighthouses, national award diplomas, and various national island awards. He was the founder of, and continues to administer both the Canadian Islands Award and the Maple Leaf Award. Garry has personally used all the call sign prefixes available for Ontario since the 3C prefixes were allowed in 1967. He has also participated on expeditions as diverse as the Polar Bridge Ski-Trek and the Polar Bear Express Train. Since 1990, VE3XN has been the assistant manager of the Ontario QSL Bureau. In addition, he is the QSL manager for the Microlite DXpeditions to VP8THU, VP8GEO and FT5XO. 

The extent of his ham radio involvement has not gone unnoticed and was featured in the Canadian Geographic magazine. He has been a regular contributor to the Radio Society of Ontario; Canadian Amateur Radio Federation; Long Skip; CRRL; and QST. Since 2002, you can find his column "DX'ing with Hammond" in RAC's The Canadian Amateur. 

Over the past 40 years, he has produced a multitude of audio-visual presentations for his students, teaching colleagues and his fellow hams. He was the featured speaker at the QCWA national convention in 2000. In 2005, he was guest presenter at the QCWA Fred Hammond Chapter 73 autumn meeting, and the Guelph Radio Club, VE3ZM. 

Always looking for new challenges, Garry has just recently upgraded from old 35mm slide carousel equipment to a state-of-the-art computer and high resolution LCD projector. With technical support from his brother, he has begun producing a new generation of presentations he hopes will inform and inspire radio amateur audiences.

Copyright 2000-4 London Amateur Radio Club
Feedback to webmaster@larc.ca