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| All about me
I first became interested in amateur radio at about age 12 - my neighbour was an amateur, a friend's Dad was an amateur, and I was lucky enough to have a Radio Club at school (King Edward's School, Birmingham) so perhaps it is not all that surprising ! After building my first HF receiver, and subsequent lessons at school, I took the RAE in December 1987 and took to the air in February 1988 with my Class B call G7DOQ aged 14. I started off with an FT-290 and an indoor HB9CV antenna, graduating onto a 10 ele crossed yagi on the side of the house. After a busy year on 2m and 70cms FM and SSB, I took the morse test and became G0MTN on 5 January 1990. In August 1990 I bought an FT-101-ZD and strung a trap dipole into the air - albeit only at 20 feet. DX was quite elusive with this antenna, but during openings I worked some rare stations. I was also lucky enough to first start using the HF bands near the sunspot maximum - when I look back in the log I was surprised to see how matter-of-factly I would log VKs, JAs, VP8s etc. on 10m, and then I went without working any for about 5 years !! Also the school club station was a useful boost
for DXing. It comprised of a TS-530 / FT-900 to a minibeam at 60
feet which was good for DX chasing on school lunchtimes.
The school club also entered the RSGB 144 MHz Fixed contest in December,
and the 144 MHz Trophy contest portable from Brown Clee Hill in Shropshire
which were my first contests.
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G3KMI Shack - June 1995 |
Between 1992 and 1995 I was at the University
of Southampton studying Electronic Engineering. The club station
there (G3KMI / G8KMI) had an old FT-101-E and IC-275E, but by the time
I had finished we had also procured a TS-450S, IC-475H, Cushcraft R7 and
PC for the club.
This club also did a few VHF contests - memorably the December 144 MHz Fixed, and the March 144 / 432 MHz contests. These were operated as Fixed Station contests, but we moved the equipment to the 10th Floor of one of the Engineering buildings and put up a 4 x 17 ele array on the top. Ah, to be freezing on the roof at 2 am again... The club's home brew 144 MHz linear almost never survived the trip across campus to it's weekend home - but that was part of the fun. The club's HF setup was quite poor until my final year, with just the FT-101 and a 20 metre dipole, so HF really took a back seat. |
The club also did Jamboree's on the Air, and took some trips out to the local rallies, and the RSGB VHF Convention once a year by minibus.
My own activities at University were quite limited to local 2m / 70cm FM, and running the University TCP/IP node / BBS, although I did finally get enough QSL cards through for my initial DXCC certificate in 1995.
| Upon leaving University, I returned home to Solihull
as I was fortunate to get a job in Birmingham with Orange,
a GSM and UMTS Network Operator in the UK, where I am currently a Principal
Network Performance Engineer.
This involves making sure that the air interface between the different cellular base stations and the mobiles works correctly, and we don't drop calls and have poor quality of service. This is done by analysis of lots of statistics, and drive surveys of the network. I am involved with a lot of network trials of new features, software and hardware, which can be a lot of fun. Anyway, I digress - back to the story... My parents had moved house in the meanwhile - the garden had shrunk from 100 feet to 60 feet. There was nowhere to hide the dipole neatly, so it ran along the garden fence - invisible to the human eye, but TVI was a problem, so I contented myself with QRP HF for a little while. Upon purchasing a Butternut HF6V vertical antenna
in 1995, I really started to hit the bands again. A second hand Ameritron
AL84 amplifier added to the signal in 1996, and in March 1997 I traded
the ailing FT-101-ZD for a TS-850-SAT. A sloping 80m trap dipole,
top at 30 feet, centre at 15 feet was an addition just before the AFS contests
in 1998.
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Following my return home, I became a full time
member, then committee member, of Wythall Radio Club. I have been
Chairman of the Wythall Contest Group, and Radio Club newsletter editor.
The Wythall Club organise their own radio rally, run other Bring and Buy
stalls, marshall for the local carnival, enter lots of contests, participate
in the odd foxhunt, and have a social programme including skittles evenings,
and parties. We are fortunate to have a nice bar on site, as
well as a tower with antennas for various VHF and HF bands. Click
here to visit their website.
I am also a member of the Lichfield Radio Society, operating for their CW AFS team, and helping at their HF Field Day contest activities as G3NKC/P (CW) and G3WAS/P (SSB). These guys have the knowhow and the resources to be at the top of the tables - it's impressive to put together a big station in the field. I've also been invited to join the Martlesham DX & Contest Group's operation as M6T in the 2000 and 2001 CQ WW DX SSB contests. |
I spent a little while using the RS-10 and RS-12
amateur satellites to make contacts around Europe, mainly using an uplink
on 144 MHz, listening on 28 MHz. My initial experiments had
been using my FT-101-ZD, but I found that on 28 MHz the older radio was
just not sensitive enough. However, when I upgraded to the
TS-850 it was like chalk and cheese. My 2 metre uplink antenna was
only a small colinear, and using my FT-290 barefoot.
I was able to have satisfactory CW, and SSB QSOs
on 3 watts, and when the satellite was directly overhead, I was able to
hear myself on the downlink with only 500 mW of uplink power - this over
a path over several hundred kilometres !
With the sad demise of RS-10, I was not able to make easy QSOs on RS-12 - the band splits or the signals not being as good as RS-10.
| Another HF interest is IOTA - I am a holder of an IOTA 100, 200 and IOTA Europe certificates. I also enter the IOTA contests and came 3rd in 1996, 1st in 1997 and 1998 in the 12 hour mixed mode Islands section - portable from the Wythall Club. In 1999 I joined the MW7Z team for an enjoyable weekend in Anglesey when it was still EU-124 ! |  |
In July 1999 I completed my first ever EME QSO on 144 MHz with W5UN from the Wythall Club. That was a real buzz to hear signals coming back off the moon, especially my own callsign ! Read how it happened here.
In 1999 I was elected to the RSGB HF Contests Committee, and I have been adjudicating the 21/28 MHz SSB and CW Contests, and the also the LF Cumulative Contests when they were still running. It's been very interesting to see how the decisions are made regarding contests rules and operations, and being about to provide some useful input.
In June 2000 I was also made a corresponding member of the RSGB VHF Contests Committee, and in 2003 a full member.
When this website was last updated at the of 2000 I said "In the next year or so I would like to be running an all band competitive HF station from home. This will necessitate buying my own house !"
After 9 months of so of looking at various areas south of Birmingham I finally found somewhere that I could afford, was close enough to work, family and friends, and yet also had a relatively good take off and the space for a LF dipole, and a small HF yagi.
Getting planning permission and building the station took a long time, but it has been well worth the wait, expense, and hard work. Read about it in the Station section
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I was lucky enough to go to Finland for the 2002
World RadioSport Team Championships as a referee. This was a fantastic
experience - click here to read more about it.
A few months later I was surprised to be joining
the Voodudes group in Burkina Faso for the CQ WW DX CW contest. I'd
never done anything like this before - click here
for more info.
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QRZ contest...
73,
Lee Volante G0MTN
August 2003
