MY
STORY......
CQ ....CQ....CQ...DX...
ON4AEK
I have been a very
active ham since the day i did get my license back in 1983. Since that day
i have been a member of NOL (north-east Limburg), and the UBA
(Royal Union of the Belgium radio-amateurs).
Look at http://www.uba.be/
In the early years of my license
i rented a small condo in the area of BREE, and did have no permission to
put up antennes outside at all.
So played around with all
kind of indoor antennes, worked more than 160 countries on 15 meter with a
indoor dipole the first year and had great fun.
The rest of my time that i spent
on the hobby was in the major contests from O T 0 ...
9 L with local friends .With these friends we were pretty busy
building a average multi-single contest site at Bree, in the backyard of
ON6MP, which was the chairman of NOL at that time.
On the picture below you can see
ON6MP (Franske) on a club fieldday in 2001.
As you can see on the picture we
had only one tilt-over tower of 24 meters.
All the rest of the antennes and
towers were built up every time we took place in a contest ( a lot of hard
workbut with great fun ).
In these days we even did a
multi-multi cqww ssb once. So imaging what a work we had do for it.
It was all great fun taking part
in the major contests.
But slowly the idea in the group
was born of looking for a better place ( Bree is one of the lowest places
in the area above sealevel) .
So we started looking for another
place, after a while we found a place ( in the backyard of ON6JZ 's
brother).
ON5LL the
clubcall was born.
It was located in the city of
Molenbeersel just about 10 km of BREE.
Here we had place enough to put
up all kind of antennes and towers, the only dificulty was , there was no
shack . One big advantage was that there were no neighbours for more
than a mile around.
We started building up some
towers and also shacks ( army shelters).
After this was finished we played
around with antennes;
- monobanders for all bands,
sloper array for 40, wire 4 square for 80 m, vertikal for 160
m (hang up with balloon).
- several long beverages ( 600m )
Contest site ON5LL
Here you see Luc ON4AKL (now
ON4IA) together with Brian N9XO in one of the cqww ssb contests.
This is how the shacks looked like.
Some of the monobanders and towers.
Anton (ON6NL) active inside one of the shacks.
Look for the club site at : http://www.qsl.net/on1dda/
We had several years of great fun at
this club contest site !!!
Also was active at other contest sites like
the big multi-multi group O T 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A .
You can have a look at : http://www.qsl.net/on7lr/
At the same time i and some other friends like
Luc (ON4IA) were bussy getting our antenne farm finished (are they
ever finished ? ) at our homes.
Started to built my own place back in 1988 and
moved in 1989 , so done with indoor antennes.
The last years i run most
of the contests from my own place now, or at ON4IA.
Pictures taken at ON4IA during one of the
major contests ;
ON1AFN (Filip) scanning the band before one of
the contests.
ON4IA (Luc) scanning the band after the
contest !!!
ON4AST (Richard) scanning the band during the
contest ,looking for multipliers.
ON6CC (Marc) running the pile-up.
A view of the site of ON4IA at sunset.
I have been married for more than 22 years now
through the grace of my XYL's (Lieve) patience with my
abnormal competive focus and drive. We have one sone Andy who just
gruaduated as a technical teacher.
When i a not doing radio, i normally spent
some time with my family or for my profession.
You can have a look at the site of TISM BREE
at : http://www.tismbree.be/ (
its only in Dutch language)
