WWW.G4DBX.COM

Loc: IO83SD
IOTA: EU005

CQ Zone 14
ITU Zone: 27

WAB: SJ65
Book No 2207

EPC 3912
DMC 789
BARTG Friends 8475

The HF station March 2011.


FTDX5000MP

The two pictures above is of the SteppIR antenna on the tower with the 40/30m conversion and a photo of one of the drive units.

The top centre picture is me in the shack April 2011


First a bit about how I got into this hobby.
I first became interested in radio when I was thirteen, this was when a school friend of mine brought into school a crystal set that his father had made for him.But is was not until three years later (1964) by which time I was in my second year as a Radio and Television service apprentice did I discover amateur radio, this was by another apprentice Ted Taylor ( I wonder what happed to Ted) who brought an R1155 receiver into work .All these years on I still remember the very first radio amateur that we heard that day this was G3OOA, a local amateur in the Crewe area at that time.
I continued to do short wave listening and going through a fair amount of government surplus equipment like WS19, WS38, HRO and the like.I finally took the RAE along with another work colleague Roy Hughes in 1968, Roy some time later emigrated to South Africa and he did get callsign ZS5YY. I got the callsign G8CLR in early 1969 before getting the class "A" call G4DBX in 1974. A big thank you to Tony G4CBW who spent a lot of his time in teaching me CW.

My very first contact in 1969 was on 2 metres AM working Ken G8ARQ I had known Ken for about two years at that time. I last saw Ken, now G4JDD back in the mid eighties.

During the 1970's the X net was started on 160 metres the origonal members were Dave G4CAX,
Peter G4AUX and myself later Peter G4LPX joined and those three went on to form triple X.

Keeping in touch: For long term ongoing skeds, the big three being Phil G3XVN, Ron G4GIQ and Dave G4UKP.

1982:

By the early eighties ham radio was very much taking a back seat as I was getting very busy with work and in 1982 we moved house and bought an old cottage on the outskirts of Crewe, this took a good eighteen months to renovate.

Off the road:

I started a new job in 1992 working for British Railways which was local and back to working on the bench this was less demanding than my previous job and having more time at home meant that the interest in radio started to return and by 2000 I was spending more time to this hobby, and now working for Marconi in telecommunications, I starting to rebuild the station to what it is today.

I went semi-retired in Feb 2008 and worked in Railway telecomms for the last eight years.

2010 onwards

I have now retired ( Feb 2010 due to ill health).

I have just built up the Elecraft K3, S/N 4001 (Late Feb 2010) I ran the K3 for just over a year, a great rig but physically a little bit on the small side for me so I have now gone over to the FTDX5000MP as from March 2011.

I work all of the LF and HF bands, when open mostly contests and rag chewing, with RTTY being my main interest along with BPSK31 and CW, more recently SSTV. If you hear me on please give me a call.

Left to right
Myself G4DBX, Alan Edwards G3DAC and SWL Martin. Circa 1980.

Current QSL card.