CONTESTING

… And a Visit With N4CW / K1IMI

Bert Michaud, N4CW, operates as K1IMI from Maine each summer (Photo A). Both Bert and his cousin, Al Michaud, were licensed in the late 1950s while they were living in Lisbon, Maine. Bert has lived most of adult life in North Carolina, but travels back to Tenants Harbor, Maine, almost every year (2020 excepted). In 2010, he registered the club call K1IMI in honor of Al.

I asked Bert about the beautiful log periodic seen on the tower braced partially by the barn at K1IMI (Photo B). The first log periodic at the Maine station was a Tennadyne T-8. The beam pictured is an Acom 8-element log periodic that has seen substantial upgrades, with fiberglass type insulators, and the Acom’s boom was so resilient that after a neighbor’s poplar took down a tower guy wire and sent the antenna into the roof of the barn, getting it back on the air only required the replacement of broken elements.

Bert’s station has achieved some impressive results in summer and early fall contests. For instance, in 2013 Bert’s CW QRP entry in IARU HF was the first-place QRP score in the U.S., and 4th place in the world. Bert is also regularly active from K1IMI in each mode of the summer North American QSO parties, almost always winning the first-place certificate for the state of Maine.

Jim Gulvin, W4TMO, has frequently traveled up to Maine to operate multi-op with Bert