Welcome The KD8CAP Webpage

   We are the Roske's..Joe (KD8CAP), Angela. Derek, Kelsey (Not in the photo yet), Nick, and Rebecca. Joe was first licensed in August of 2005. I became interested in Amateur Radio after talking to Doug(KI4JPR) and Malcom(KI4IME), 2 of my co-workers and now friends. I also spoke to Lonny (KI4EED) at one of my gas station I was delivering to, heightening my curiousity.

   After studying for about 3 weeks I passed my Technician test. My wife on the other hand studied for one day and was ready for the test. After over a year of nagging her, she took and passed her Tech test in Feb 2007, the same day I upgraded to General Class. Her license expired but I  still have plans on studying and making it to Extra. Now that I'm retired due to Covid19 I have time to study.

   Where did I disappear to??? I was driving truck over the road.. until Oct '21 I contracted Covid19 Delta while on the road. I ended up in Marietta Georgia and that was my home for the next 106 days in Wellstar Kennestone Hospital. When I was released from the hospital my lung capacity was at 43% and I was on 24/7 oxygen. After a lot of rehab, both physical and pulmonary, my lung capacity is now (August 2024) 77% and on oxygen at night and as needed during the day. Humidity and pollen are my enemies.

I have discovered the world of digital operations. I love FT8!!! I have been playing around with JS8Call with little success. 

I have also discovered the world of Parks on the Air (POTA). I do mostly park hunting but would like to activate more parks.

   We presently reside in Princeton, WV. We have 4 awesome kids,  Derek, 28; Kelsey (Derek's wife), 27; Nick,24; and Rebecca, 19... 

    Our modest station consists of a Yaesu FT-991A connected to a LDG 9:1 unun and a 85 foot random wire.

   I also have a Kenwood D700A which has a broken Mic port and is now a digipeater. I managed to find a repair shop in Florida for it to be repaired. BUT I decided  to use it as a Digipeater instead, since our area has a shortage of APRS digis. I am running the digi on the Raspberry Pi4 with Direwolf and Xastir. I am using a Digirig between the radio and the RPi. I could not get the TNC on the radio to work. If you are passing thru you will see KD8CAP-10...

   In the mean time I found a used one on an estate sale on ebay and bought it for a ridiculously low price. It is now installed in my 2024 Silverado along with my Ft891. I have a 2m/440 Antenna on the hood and an ATAS120 antenna and a CB Antennta on the truck bed.

   In addition,  I just completed building a 100ah LifePo4 battery box to power the radio and to charge my portable oxygen concentrator and portable radio operation.

NEw ADDITIONs!!

   I found a Kenwood TS-2000 and bought it!!! This radio was the first radio I owned as a HAM. I had to sell it many years ago due to financial hardship. It has a serial number outside the serial number range that this radio had issues. It has also had the MARS Mod already installed. I have also purchased a Signalink to match the radio. I have been on FT8 for the last 2 days. It works great!!! I have not got the CAT control to work yet but I am waiting on a new cable for CAT Control. There is very little information online for connecting to digital modes. I will document the adaptation in the JTDX section of this site.  

The '24 Silverado also recived an upgrade. One of the credit cards I recently aquired had a deal that if I speant $1k in three months they would give me a $300 credit. Easy for me. The cost of an ATAS-120a put me over the 1K limit so the credit card company bought me the antenna and I'm loving it.

   I have alot of future upgrades that I want to implement. I would like to add a weather station once again. My old weather station is gone. I will be upgrading my coax in spring to Messi and Paoloni coax. I would also like to build a Hexbeam antenna.

I have just added a Raspberry Pi 4b 8gb running the HamPi 2.0 software package designed for Ham radio. I have added exerything you need to get started in the links to the left to include Amazon links to purchase what you need.

I have my FT991A, LDG 1:1 choke, KMR400 coax and my Random Wire Antenna running in my bedroom on the night stand. The common mode current is finally gone!!!

I use VNC viewer to play on the radio from my desk in my home office. The only thing I have to do is go back to the bedroom to press tune on the radio if I change bands. I operate FT8 on the RPi with JTDX as well as Grid Tracker. I don't have a log program that I like so I email wsjt-x adi file to myself and import it to my logging program.