ham radio
December 1997

Station 1975 I'm a licensed ham radio operator since 1974 when I lived near Heidelberg in south west Germany. For the shortwave bands I first had only access to an 80m and later a 20m transceiver borrowed from the local club . They both had no keying input, so I lost my morse code knowledge rather fast.
Later Heinz, DJ8LF lend me his Sommerkamp transceiver, and I could be active on all the shortwave bands.
For VHF I had a Storno W8, with two crystals for every FM frequency pair and two tubes in the final stage. I experimented with ATV on 70cm, with a huge tube camera and homebuild transmitter circuitry after the magazine UKW-Berichte. I didn't finish the final amplifier because of a change of residence.
QSL card

Since fall 1977 I studied electrical engineering in Berlin where I joined the Reinickendorf ham radio club. I brought along a 2m rig with wrong crystal frequencies, so I changed my hobby from ham radio to computers. My first computer with a Z80 processor started working in 1978. I designed it by myself and had a lot of work soldering all those ICs. That time it was a great machine. Looking back from today it was very primitive but cost as much as a high-tech notebook of today. But after all that investment was lucrative because I earned good money later with my computer knowledge.

Years later a co-worker got his ham radio examination. I started again with ham radio and enjoy it until today. With today's modern rigs I could join ham radio and computers. Besides using packet radio I programmed a CAT software for controlling my FT-890 and now other transceivers.

details of my antennas
impressions from the HAM RADIO 1997 exhibition
ham radio links
ham radio software

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Document Revision:   23 Jul 2007
(c) 2007 Rolf Bleher
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