About Myself

I was born in 1964 in Nottingham, England. I first listened to amateur radio in late 1976, mostly on 20m and 80m. I dreamed of having a licence, but in those days before the novice licence was introduced, I had to wait until I was 14. I did the licence exam (RAE) in June 1979 and received my first call sign of G8TXQ in the October of that year. This licence was of CEPT class 2 and only allowed for operation on 2m and higher in those days, I only had 2m and 70cms FM and I rapidly became frustrated despite living in a very good RF location, 304m ASL in IO93FB.

I did my morse exam in the summer of 1980 and received my new call sign, G4KLX, in October 1980. I spent about a year on the HF bands working the world, which was very easy because of it being the peak of the sunspot cycle. I decided that I needed something more challenging and so I got into 2m SSB/CW using a Liner 2 and was quite succesful. Once I started work I could afford better radios, higher powers and bigger antennas. I dabbled in MS but preferred Aurora and Tropo operating as the skills needed were more to my taste, probably because I have very good hearing.

I first started on the microwave bands in 1985 when I built an LMW Electronics transverter for 23cms which with a solid state PA gave me 6W to a 23ele Tonna yagi. I then built a single 2C39BA amplifier and used 40W to the same antenna. I was quite succesful, I worked OK, OE and SP on 23cms, and Lithuania (UP1BWR) on 70cms. At the time I wanted to move up to 3cms because narrowband was just becoming popular, but I couldn't afford the SSB Electronics transverter and I didn't have the skills to build something similar. In 1988 I moved to a much worse RF location and any plans for higher bands disappeared when I got into packet radio.

After recovering from packet radio in 1997 I almost bought the DB6NT transverter system for 3cms, but at that time I moved to Brussels with my work and my time was kept busy by various females from then until 1999. By 1999 I was living in Zürich and had just finished with yet another girlfriend, I took the opportunity to buy the DB6NT 3cms transverter and PA because of the favourable VAT and currency exchange rates available in Switzerland. I ended up building my first 10 GHz transverter system in time for the October 1999 IARU contest, it was built in a marathon two days. The Saturday was spent driving to Weinheim and buying the parts that I needed and then the Sunday was spent drilling and soldering. After some teething troubles it was ready in time. A report on that contest can be found in the Articles section.

After having great fun on that band I decided to try 6cms as it appealed to me more than any other band and in order to be a bit different from most people. I bought a DB6NT transverter and PAs from F1JSR and I was about to build that up to a working system when disaster struck.

About two weeks after getting the 6cms equipment I met a woman in Zürich. Things moved very quickly, but not amateur radio, and we were married in May 2000. However after things settled down, I started to get my amateur equipment back together and to build a combined 6/3cms transverter unit along with a new 60cms dish with a WB5LUA dual-band dish feed. In October 2000 I received my Swiss call sign, HB9DRD.

In April 2001 we moved from Höngg (an area of Zürich city) to Pfaffhausen, which was almost on top of a hill with a very good take-off to the north. Things really started to improve (radio wise) from that time. I moved in time for the Rain Scatter season on 6cms and 3cms and had my first home based QSOs on that band, the season itself was not a classic but it did enable me to work some squares, at around this time I got access to the Internet via the cable TV and so I became active 24 hours a day on the DX Cluster and Converse system.

The Rain Scatter season of 2002 was far better than that of 2001 and subsequently I moved up to 31 squares on 3cms and 18 squares on 6cms. My ODX on 6cms and 3cms (and 23cms !) was 654kms with Eene PA3CEG, the 6cms distance which was the Region 1 Rain Scatter record, although Gerard PA0BAT has beaten it. In June/July 2002 I did a rebuild of my transverter and antenna and it had a 90cms offset feed dish and 10W on 3cms, the dish feed is dual band (6/3cms) design from DD7MH. I left the excellent Pfaffhausen QTH in April 2003 (with a tear in my eye, I loved it there) and we moved to Dietikon. I lived there only for a short time before moving back to the UK.

I returned to the UK in May 2003, and writing software that was used on AO-40. This software added strong FEC to the AO-40 beacon, and the results have been extraordainary. James Miller G3RUH was able to receive the beacon without errors at Apogee with only a quarter wave antenna ! AMSAT-NA presented me (in absentia) with a trophy and a certificate for my work in converting the KA9Q FEC code from C to IPS. Unfortunately AO-40 died a short while afterwards putting an end to that experiment. I did some 6 and 3cms operation /P from various sites, and had to get a heavier tripod due to the old one being blown over too many times in the wind.

I stayed in the UK until August 2004 working at W3Z and then moved back to Brussels, a city that I love. I had a flat with a very good take off to the east, it was on the fourth floor without a lift, and 83 steps to get to it. I did a some radio there, mostly to do with SDR and a little RF operation, but not much. I had a great time in Belgium and gained a taste for fine food and beer. For various reasons I left Belgium in October 2008 and lived in Mill Hill in London for a few months. It was during this time that I got involved in D-Star.

I saw a facet of the hobby that was sadly lacking in home construction and riven with stupid politics, a bit like packet radio but worse. I decided to act and wrote some software to allow for the use of a sound card to connect a radio to a PC to access the repaters or simplex use. This evolved into a full blown D-Star repeater software which is in use at over fifty repeaters now, along with an FM repeater controller. The pair used together, such as at GB3IN allows for a fully software defined repeater.

In July 2009 I moved to Leicester, and in late September of the same year I started an MSc in Information and Communications Engineering at Leicester University. It was very hard work, but I did manage to find time to work on my software, while learning DSP and HF/VHF/UHF propagation on the course. It was an eye opener as a lot of what is taught to amateurs is simplified to a ridiculous degree. The course finished in September 2010, and I am due to start studying for my PhD in October 2010. In July 2010 I got married again :-)

Radio wise I'm not particularly active in Leicester due to being in a rented flat and being in a poor RF location. I have bought some new radios recently-ish, an Icom IC-91AD for D-Star, a Yaesu FT-817ND which is a marvel of miniaturisation, and a Wouxun KG-699E for 4m. I also have an unbuilt 4m transverter which will eventually be mated with the FT-817 for a small 4m multi-mode system.

Last modified on 15.09.2010