Hello, I'm Dale Pelzer, KL7R, first licensed in California. Moved to Alaska in 1981 and upgraded to NL7DU. In 1996 received Vanity callsign KL1R. In 2009 applied for KL7R and got it.

In the fall of 2010 while working in Northway, Alaska, BP92, I saw my co worker Andre, KL7AC, with a strange purple cross element portable Yagi antenna. I asked what he was doing? Portable LEO, Low Earth Satellite contacts via a dual band FM handheld. I was hooked.

My previous jobs with the FAA and BLM kept me traveling to many different sites in northern and southeast Alaska. The job also provided many opportunities to work from remote Alaska Maidenhead grid squares.

With the sad untimely passing of AO-51 and AO-27, RIP, I've had to upgrade my portable operation with the addition of a preamp. Following the design of KL7H's Mega Arrow I've added the preamp and battery box to the boom of the Arrow Antenna.

SO-50 is tough to work from this far north. Radio operators in the “Lower 48” report that I'm heard clearly, but I am unable to hear them all too often.

Been working schedules with Ham's who I've contacted which is about the only way to get SO-50 contacts. I do not make many contacts just listening to it.

Summits on the Air assigned Summits March 2016 to Alaska.  I've been Activating some of the Summits around Alaska via local 146.52mhz Simplex contacts or Ham Radio Satellites like FO-29 and SO-50. 

I'm hoping to put up another tower and my old Cushcraft A4S and get back to HF contesting just in time for bottom of the Solar Cycle.