Name :    Vojtech Klusacek.
QTH:       Prague (Praha - the capital of the Czech Republic), locator JO70GC,
e-mail : 

My life (briefly):
I am 38 years old, married with Jolana ( OK1IAW ), we have three children, daughter Elisabeth (1994), in the middle the boy Matej (2000) and the youngest Julie (2006).
I studied radioelectronics at the Czech Technical University Prague, in 1994 I received MSc ( in czech Ing.), in 2002 I have received  Ph.D. degree, my doctoral thesis deals with microwave vector measurement systems. I am specialized mainly to the high frequency circuit and antenna design, different measurement techniques and communication systems.

My work:
I am working since 1997 as a microwave designer in a company named ALCOMA ( http://www.alcoma.cz ), a leading producer of microwave links in the Czech Republic. I am designing and constructing microwave circuits and blocks for our microwave relay links up to 26GHz, such as LNBs, power amps, oscillators, mixers, synthesizers and so on. What more can you wish, if you can do something, what you have years studied, it is your hobby and you are paid for it? Let us hope it will not bore me after some time!

I have to add that in our company, there are working more other hams, such as OK1PRU, OK1FRU, OK1XZA, OK1FPC a good community indeed!! We have a club station OK1KRU. Due to the lack of time we are not so active as we want, but maybe in the future we will find some more time to our club team activity and improve our activity on the bands, but I do not believe to that too much because year after year we are more and more busy with a less free time. Do you know that feeling too?

My hobbies:
I was and I am still a very active person with a lots of hobbies and interests. From my childhood I have collected historical post stamps (mostly Europe up to 1945, Czechoslovakia 1918-1938). I like fishing, mainly trouts, but pond fishing too. I like music and learned to play piano and a trumpet, than a little bit country guitar and bass. I was playing dixieland, rock and roll and blues with a different bands. The very active years with music I spent when I have played the trumpet with the band   BLUESBERRY. You can find my trumpet barks on two CDs of this band too.  I have composed some small music for TV advertisements, it was nothing bombastic, but an interesting work and experience.  Now I am playing trumpet with a band called  WOODEN SHOES, another band from the Hanspaulka, a known Prague quarter,  the nest of the czech blues music. We are playing  not often, so every our concert we play from all of our hearts and it is a great feeling. Short time ago I  have joined a next friendly "bigband" group  OOZ, imagine brass and saxophone section with seven musicans!!!
All of those bands are sure not on the top 40, but I like it very much to play and it is a great fun between musicians, very different experience  and a counterweight to my work. I am sure not a good trumpet player, I am never satisfied with my sound and the tone range. The trumpet is a very ungrateful instrument, it needs regular training.  Without the training the trumpet behaves as a pipe full of crow croaking, but sometimes when it sounds good you can think you are touching the music...... I hope Mr. Louis Armstrong is not looking at me!

An another big hobby is a motorcycling. I  have begun  with a JAWA 21 (50ccm), it was my 1st workhorse which I have got in 15 years age after getting my first driving licence. In the best years I was able to ride on it  about 3500 km per year!!!  A reliable two-stroke machine for a young boy indeed with the 4 HP engine!
After 50 years I  had a  great luck with buying a "veteran" bike with a history connected to our family!  It was my father's bike in his younghood ( original picture with my father on it in 1951) ) and he sold it around 1955. I have bought (with a great luck and diplomacy) the same machine back (from the same person to whom it was in 1955 sold) after 50 years again. Looking terrible, rusty, but quite complete (see the gallery). After one year of exhausting reconstruction it is looking like a motorcycle again  (me and bike in 2004) .  It is CZ  125 T  (in Czech correctly written ČZ 125T   as a shortage of name of the factory Česká Zbrojovka - Czech Armament Factory) a 125ccm hardtail motorcycle from 1949.  It is a quite legendary bike which was exported to USA  too and sold under Indian brand  as Indian CZ 125 !! Some pictures will be sure added (see gallery). For people who interests more in this theme I reccomend a site www.motomagazin.cz,  where lots of information about czech vintage motorcycles can be found.
I am dreaming  a lot about a bigger chopper too, for some more comfortable rides, but it is a question when this dream will came true due to some other reasons.
It seems that the motto "oldies are goldies"  is still valid in my life. We are restoring (my father and partly me) now our vintage cabriolet DKW  F7 from 1938, father's car too, which we have from the sixtees in our family.

The last and strongest hobby (but not least) is the radio and radioelectronics (more written down).
I am not sure if my beautiful wife and our children are a true hobby, but it is sure an activity, which spends sure a part of my free time too.
 

My own HAM activity:
A story how I got to radioelectronics is quite long and it will full a single paragraph (maybe I will publish it in the future).  The present is below.
After moving into a new flat (13. floor!!!) all antennas are slowly growing again on the roof!!  I am interested mostly in VHF and UHF band, but I do not forget to shortwaves too. Due to the QTH which is placed in the eastern part of the capital city Prague, I had to focus to activities which can be done from the average QTH, so I have decided to work on the satellites. I have tried sats such as RSs, FO-20, FO-29, AO-10 in SSB. I have prepared and tested equipment for AO-40. More about my AO-40 activities you can find  here.  Unfortunately due to the AO-40 failure the dish for 13cm on the roof is silent, up to the start of P3-E I replaced the 13cm convertor with a feed for 23cm for some local activities, but I am ready to reinstall it back again immediatelly, when some new SSB microwave bird appearss again.
From the May 2005 (due to the administrative changes in czech HAM licence classes) I am active on shortwaves too.

I am sometimes active too during contests from home or portable QTH on 2m, 70cm, 23cm or on 3cm somewhere in the mountains under my callsign or our club callsign OK1KRU. In my free time ( which is year after year  (and child after child) more and more limited ) I like to design and construct different HF circuits, I have constructed transvertors, PAs, preamps and measurement equipment for RF, but there is not so much time as before and to be honest, sometimes I am so tired from the work, that a look to a soldering iron makes me qualm. Iagree that Internet and virtuality of its word is not a good thing, it is a time eater.
I was involved in some antenna development for 2.4GHz, a little bit more about my WIFI activities as a result of some antenna development you can find here. (in the future).

My ham equipment:
HISTORY:
All begun on CB, with President HR-2510 for 10m, than different  homebrew transvertors, than FT-780R. After that the  Icom IC706 MK 1 with homebrew 100W PA with Dual VMOS transistor BLF278 (PHILIPS) were used. My antenna is 6el. yagi in horizontal polarization for 2m with GaAs FET preamplifier (homebrew too, using russian military power GaAs FET for 12GHz/0.5W AP602D with ultra high IP and F=0.8dB on 144MHz. This was a need due to a presence of local TV and radio strong signals and diverse radio smog of the capital city around my QTH).  The signals  from CCIR FM radio and UHF TV from local main Prague transmitter with 100kW transmitted power reaches about -10dBm on my antenna output!!!!!  
For 70cm I am using an old Yaesu FT-780R (15W out)  with  17el. F9FT antenna in horizontal polarization. I am planning to built some preamp and PA for 70cm, transvertor for 23cm and higher, but nobody knows, when I find some time for it.
For 3cm I have adapted some components used in our 10GHz microwave link to work as a SSB transvertor. As the local oscillator  I am using phase locked DRO, which is controlled by use of DDS synthesizer. It works very good and the frequency accuracy on 10GHz  can be set in a Hz range. I am having now only 100mW, but the all components for 10W PA are waiting in my drawer at work for better free times. 

PRESENT:
The IC-706 and the FT-780R were sold,  as  a replacement the KENWOOD TS-790E (2m, 70cm, 23cm allmode) came home. Having now a triband with sat capabilities is better, its basic power is higher and I have to say that I like more the classical radios with thousands of knobs than a modern radios (IC-706) with thousands of menus. Now I am planning to add T/R switching, adapt the radio to be able to work with PA and transvertors for microwaves. Trying to be active from time to time, due to the failure of AO-40 loosing enthusiasm, let us hope the future will be brighter.
For the shortwaves a KENWOOD TS-450S was bought and on the roof a triband mini-beam MINI 2000 from ZX Yagi was added and a G5RV  wire antenna for the lower bands. On our house it is a maximum, what I can allow. The QTH is good (high), but I have problems with interference from speed control (frequency convertor) of the elevator engines and industrial noises of the city around me. I am limited too in transmitting power due to the proximity of 100 flats of my neighborrows to my antenna. Causing TVI or EMI will be a very unpleasant problem for me.

For satellite traffic I have adapted my old rotator (Commander 2000) for computer control. The elevation control is made by use of standard satellite dish actuator (computer controlled too), a much cheaper solution in comparison to other elevation rotators. My PC is equipped with A/D and D/A card and digital I/O card  (now Labjack D12) and for the whole tracking system I have programmed a special control software in Delphi (Pascal), which can track the satellite automatically in azimuth and elevation by use of DDE collaboration with the tracking program.  Everything is made in realtime now working under XPs.
Because all works automatically,  I can fully concentrate on QSOs, because the 70cm Yagi and mainly 13cm dish is very sharp and manual tracing is not very comfortable and easy. I am curious to see, how it will be with the 1.8m dish on 13cm and on 3cm.

Special page devoted to my  AO-40 activities (inclusive the MMDS convertor modifications) you can  find here.

See you later on the air! 73s!

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A small picture gallery of my family and ham activities, by clicking on the thumbnails you can get the enlarged pictures, best viewed in 800x600 or higher.
Some of the pictures are quite big, be patient or do not download them with slow Internet connection!!

Family Gallery

That is me OK1VAW. No comments.
 

This is my wife Jolana OK1IAW. You can see the question in her eyes: Why I have married you, Vojtech?.

My daughter Alzbeta in the age of 5, picture taken in cockpit of TU-154 airplane somewhere over Greece. It was in the peacefull times when it was allowed during the flight to visit the captain in the pilot room.

A big girl Alzbeta after some years later. The time is running.....

My son Matej..

Family holiday idyll in Croatia, my mother, my wife and me.

My father on the CZ-125T  motorcycle in 1950.

  My father now.

If you see me comming better step a side....Our CZ-125T after reconstruction and me.

3,2,1 GO!!! Me and my wife on tandem in action in the Klecanska Veteran Rallye.

That is me, taken around 1994, in my old ham-shack in the old flat, before my wings were space cut by marriage. Seet university times!! Left you can see a russian spectrum analyzer to 40GHz!!!!, a russian oscilloscope to 250 MHz, a signal generator 2MHz -1GHz Ferisol  LF 301 and a counter. The red box is my diploma thesis result: PC controlled sweeper 1MHz-1GHz. The time is running.....

Three pictures of my old flat antenna farm. 6 element Yagi on 2m in horizontal, 17 elements on 70cm in horizontal and multiband harmonic log-periodic antenna "Fish bone" for 2m, 70cm and 23cm. A very interesting construction with good performance. You can see different elevations of the whole system, controlled by satellite super-jack. Easy and reliable. All of that is history now.
 

For "high power" lovers. One of my weekend project maybe 10 years ago,  a power amplifier with a FET BLF278A constructed for 2m (for the IC706), which after first adjustment works so good, that I have no itch to rebuild it, although it looks very wild. It will probably last for ever, as Germans said "bombenfest und idiotensicher". Bipolars-never more!!  More pictures of that project  find here.

Sorry for my english, trying to do my best!

Last changes 8. November 2007
 
 

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