Category Archives: ham radio logos

Iron man

Posted on by

This QSL was a challenge. Jason, KB8SDF, is a professional machinist; his shack is in a much larger shop that would be the envy of an hobbyist. The challenge was making all of those tools fit together on a small postcard (along with a picture of Jason himself).

I finally was able to tie it together with a font that itself looked as if it had been built in Jason’s shop. The font, Iron Man of War, looks familiar for a reason — it’s similar to a font used for the classic logo of Iron Man. Jason fell in love with the font when he saw it, I added a few details from his shack and a caricature of Jason … and there you have it.

Moose on the loose

Posted on by

Østerdalsgruppen av NRRL logoHams like to work local landmarks into their QSL cards and club logos. It’s not every day the landmark in question is the world’s largest steel moose.

Norwegian amateur radio operator Knut, LA9DSA, contacted me for his radio club, Østerdalsgruppen av NRRL, to ask if I could do something with said landmark (pictured below). Unveiled just a few years ago, the metal moose is 33 feet tall and located in a rest area along the road between Oslo and Trondheim; its name is Storelgen. The idea behind it is to remind drivers to be careful not to hit moose crossing the road. Also, it just looks really cool. I went with silver and blue to make the logo appropriately metallic — with headphones and a boom mike, of course.

Storelgen, the world's biggest mooseBefore this metal moose was erected, the biggest moose sculpture in the world was 32-foot-tall Mac the Moose in Saskatchewan, Canada. According to one website, rumor has it the Canadians want to reclaim the record by building an even bigger moose. When that happens, I look forward to creating that local club’s logo as well.

Postscript: Since 2017 when I created the logo, the moose rivalry has drawn the attention of The New York Times. This article appeared in January 2019.

DXpedition to Tidra

Posted on by

5T5TI DXpedition logo by N2ESTSometimes the solution is obvious. DXpedition? From an island? With a pelican? And a hex beam? Coming right up!

Kuwaiti amateur Ahmad, 9K2AI/5T2AI, commissioned me earlier this year to create a logo for a DXpedition station on Tidra, an island just off the coast of Mauritania. The logo would be used on banners, websites, and, of course, QSLs. The only requirements: It must include the call sign, one of the great white pelicans native to the island, and a hex beam antenna. Done, done, and done.

Judging from Ahmad’s 5T5TI QRZ.com page, he and his cohorts have been there before and plan to return this December. Contact them on the air, and you can get a QSL with this groovy logo. Good luck!

I draw logos too

Posted on by

Colorado Amateur Radio Team logoI draw ham-radio club logos, too. This is one of them.

When Jim, KC0JIM, asked me to create a logo for the Colorado Amateur Radio Team (CART), the solution was obvious: Make it a cart.

The final execution was more complicated. Jim and his club wanted a logo that would look good big, on banners and whatnot. That required that I convert my line drawing, created by hand, into vectors using Adobe Illustrator. Because I’ve never been happy with the results of auto-tracing a bitmap image, I traced this one manually to ensure the integrity of the drawing.

Jim was happy with the results. So was I.