My name is Rich, and I live in Douglas, the capital town of the Isle of Man.
Brief history : The Isle of Man is in the middle of the Irish Sea, British Isles, is 30 miles long, 12 miles wide, with a population of approx 70,000. The Island is not actually part of the UK, but is a self governing Crown Possession, Queen Elisabeth II is 'Lord of Man'. The Island is usually known as the home of Manx cats, TT motorcycle road races and other sports, the great Laxey Wheel, victorian steam and electric railways, horse drawn trams on Douglas promenade, and Tynwald - the oldest continuous system of government in the world, established by the Vikings in 979AD. It is also the birthplace of the Bee Gees pop group and had the first licenced commercial radio station in the British Isles, Manx Radio.
About me : I have been licenced since 1970, and my main radio interests are VHF dx, looking for dx contacts by tropo, sporadic-E, Aurora etc. but I am not currently very active since moving house and with business commitments. I am a professional communications engineer, and a self-confessed 'landy-head', having owned a Landrover or Range Rover of one sort or another since 1975.
My current amateur activity is as the sysop of the GB7IOM packet mailbox which started operation on 13th Dec 1992, and I am a member of the Isle of Man Amateur Radio Society, which was formed in 1947. Please have a look at the web page of our club station GT3FLH (on qsl.net of course !). I seem to have been playing with computers since I built a 'Nascom2' a long time ago ( but not playing games !).
Sound bites from my archives : Here's some nice 144mhz auroral dx from
and Italy
for you to listen to, it was recorded on July 13th1982 and the most gigantic aurora I was actively involved in (and the locator system has changed from QRA to the Maidenhead system since then !)
If you are new to the fascinating hobby of radio communications and electronics and would like to find out more basic knowledge try the following links -
Gallery : This was our little friend Honey, a 'Sheltie' (Shetland sheepdog ). and our two new sheltie pups when they were 5 months old. I used to have fun car- rallying in an Austin Maxi built by the BMC competitions department in 1969. This was in the Manx International Rally. Finally, this is me doing some aerial rigging on the highest radio tower on the Island, with the Laxey valley in the distance.
.
Thank you for reading my page.
I have reduced the file sizes of the pictures so that they download faster for you.
Rich GD3YEO <= click here for my E-mail.
Page updated 25th February 2001