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Visitors since 2 July 2015

A personal journey with Amateur Radio

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Updated 24/5/2025

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Hi! My name is Rudi, I have been a licensed Ham since 1996 and a SWL long before that when I was still at school. I still clearly remember my first short wave receiver, it was a Phillips valve set. The magic of the glowing valves in the dark while listening to exotic stations will always be with me, and then there was the smell of hot valves and Bakelite, maybe that is why I still love valve amplifiers!

I build my first (CW) transmitter when I was 10 years old. My previous calls were ZR6VE (restricted to 50 MHz and above only) and later upgraded to ZS6VER before changing to ZS6DX, We have a second "home" that is located in the rural Eastern Cape province of South Africa, these days this is our primary home unless we are travelling. My ZS2M call is now the call I use most of the time. I also hold the calls ZS1BT and V51VE. I was born in Namibia (Windhoek) but I grew up in Pretoria, South Africa.

I enjoy contesting and DX'ing, mostly on CW but I can also occasionally be found on SSB, I have to admit I find the digital modes like FT8 quite boring. I also love playing with radios, modifying, restoring or improving and home-brew is always fun.

My collection of older radios, mostly top end HF transceivers, is slowly growing, at the moment I am concentrating on older "flagship" radios from the three mayor players in the field.

I really love CW, it still holds all the magic of amateur radio that enticed me to it as a youngster. Running low power and often from spots away from home in nature is really fun.

Apart from playing with radios and electronics in general I also enjoy nature, traveling, exploring, hiking and nature/landscape photography. Photography is a hobby but it has become a bit of a second career for me (even though I am officially retired!) with prints selling around the world. I mostly sell my work via international agents and fine-art prints direct. I also have a YouTube channel featuring my landscape photography and other subjects, you can see what I get up to HERE.

For me amateur radio has become a way of life, I take it into account where ever I am or what ever I do, it brings peace to my life and the wonder of far away places, I have also made great friends via amateur radio over the years.

This page is a short summary of my journey with amateur radio, I hope you enjoy it!

NOTE: I have been asked why I keep a running log of my activities here, well, there are many reasons. Quite a few people read what I post here, I can see it from the page hits and also from the number of emails I receive. But there is another reason I post here, it is for my own benefit to sometimes read what I have been up to years ago, just like people will do with a personal diary.

73 Rudi de ZS6DX/ZS2M/ZS1BT/V51VE