Amateur Radio

I have been a Radio Ham since 1982 but sad to say have not been in a position to set up a station since 1989. I did go to the trouble of buying a new mobile antenna last year seriously thinking I would go mobile, but quite frankly I never go anywhere to use it. So the radio sits in its box in the cupboard.:(

 

Hi Moyra strange but true I 'met' my hubby via the CB radio way back in the very early 80's I guess you can call it the internet dating of the time we haven't used ours for years as they are stuffed away in boxes just like a true hoader I can't get rid of stuff.

It's kind of sad we gave up on it as we met an awful lot of really nice people on the meet-ups rallies. I remember how we all use to jump in our cars and play hide and seek in Clumber Park in the middle of the night such a big place and most often than not someone always got lost thank goodness for the radios otherwise they would have had to sleep there the whole night.:DHel.xxx

 

Yes, I started off on CB Pirate Radio and the secret meets were great then when things got tricky on there and they brought in the lega CB I went to College got my City and Guilds and passed the Amateur Radio Exams. I am afraid the legal CB didn't satisfy my lust for speaking to people around the world hence why I became a radio ham so I could legally sideband. We twinned with Amateur Radio Clubs in Holland and Germany and had exchange visits it was great. I suppose CB is still around today. Maybe it will have another upsurge.

 

Although I've got a reasonably decent set up at home (5 band HF quad + a couple of verticals and a 5 element yagi on 50MHz) These days I'm getting a lot of fun going out portable. I've a multiband rotary dipole that I take away during trips in our motor home. I bought a little low power (5W max) radio a couple of years ago - it's small enough to fit in a coat pocket and I made a small multi-band ground plane antenna that collapses down small enough to fit a suitcase. I take this to Greece every summer and do a bit of low power cw from the balcony of the studio we rent. Last year I was really chuffed when I had a contact with Japan on just 2.5 Watts- this was despite pretty lousy propagation during the present low in the sunspot cycle.

Go on Moyra - dig that radio out of the cupboard.
73 de GM0LVI

 

god, this takes me back to when i was an air cadet and we had a full set up in a room and one of the instructors was legal.

fast forward 14 years and some of my aircrew were radioing from the med on hf to our base in prestwick.

 

Oh, brings back memories. Not as an ameteur but when I was a radio op in the Royal Signals. Not the same of course but still world wide communications, mostly by morse code.

I did consider setting myself up years later but never did get round to it.

 

Fred - Sadly the morse 10wpm qualification has now been abandoned for an amateur licence. I still use it as my prefered mode - Mrs W can't tell if I'm talking about her! Aged 12 I cut my listening teeth on an R1155 (ex-Lancaster bomber) and then later learned to transmit on HF on the T1154 and 19 set in the CCF. Modified a crystal controlled 46 set so that I could pirate on the 40m ham band - was about 15 at the time! Rose to the dizzy rank of cpl in the sigs section, and would have been Sgt if I'd stayed on a year longer at school.

Alasdair - A couple of years ago we spent a week on the island of Tanera Mor in the Summer Isles and I took a small 100W HF radio and some antennas. I was working on 20m which wasn't in particularly great condition when I was surprised to hear a very loud american voice call me. It was the pilot (Ham licenced) of a transatlantic jet en-route for USA, whose con trail I could see above us. We had quite a nice natter and almost an eyball qso!

My most memorable contact (it's a long story) is with a pal who was working in Antarctica and who was out on the ice - Dog Sled Mobile.He was running just 10W into an antenna held up with ski poles. It was the last year that dogs were allowed in Antarctica.

 

What a surprise to come back and find so many others interested in Radio. Alas although I learnt morse I never felt confident enough to take the morse test. So still G6 WLQ or Wicked Little Queen as our fellow radio hams called me when I was active. I was Secretary to the Southend & District Amateur Radio Society for a while before I moved away in 1989 and that alas was when the radio was packed away. Apart from dragging it out every so often to have a friend wind it up to check that the capacitors are still holding up I just haven't the enthusiasm I used to have for it. The last contact I had on radio was in the S&D shack and it was with the Ham who went up on the space shuttle.......so long ago now.