Customer Spotlight · N9BGG

Back on the air at 85, after thirty years away.

Russ, N9BGG, had been off the air for over thirty years. At 85, thirty miles west of Chicago, he put up a Greyline flagpole and got back on — and within his first handful of contacts he had worked from Mississippi to Texas to Alberta to Latvia. This is the one that matters most.

Russ, N9BGG, and his Greyline flagpole — thirty miles west of Chicago, thirty years back on the air.

Thirty years is a long time off the bands

A lot changes in three decades of amateur radio — modes, gear, the whole texture of the bands. Coming back to it at 85 takes some nerve, and it takes an antenna that gets on the air without a tower, a rotator, or a field of buried radials. Russ, thirty miles west of Chicago, chose the Greyline flagpole for exactly that reason: one piece, up, on the air.

And it answered. His early contacts traced a fast-widening circle — Mississippi, then Texas, then up into Alberta, and then across the Atlantic to Latvia. For an operator who had been quiet since the early 1990s, that first transatlantic contact is the moment the hobby comes back to life.

Why this one matters

Greyline points the way for the operators chasing awards and contest scores — but the hobby is also Russ, getting back on at 85 because the antenna made it simple. The flagpole form is what made it possible: no tower to raise, no radials to bury, nothing for an HOA to object to. Just a flag flying, and a station on the air again. That is the part the spec sheet never captures.