Much of my knowledge of electronics that I have used in my projects started out from my early days as a radio amateur. Up until the last three years I have been fairly inactive largely due to the fact that I was living overseas and frequently moving around during my medical training.

I first became interested in amateur radio when I was at school. I owe much of this to John Weston, G3LYW, who used to teach us radio and electronics on a voluntary basis. I’m still in touch with John and have a regular “sked” with him on 160m every week. I took the Radio Amateurs Exam (RAE) as it was then when I was 16 years old and obtained my Class A licence three years later.

Using a home-brew valve rig and a Trio RS1000 receiver I was soon on the air and spent many an evening at University talking to people around the world on CW (morse code).

During the ’90s and early ’00s I was living in South Africa and although licensed as ZS6BLU I never really got back on the air. I decided to buy a second hand transceiver about 3 years ago as and having put up a simple endfed antenna I am now once again having more and more QSO’s. I have had to get my CW up to speed as it has become distinctly rusty over the years.

Here’s a picture of the shack as it is at the moment. The rig is an Icom 720A with a Mac 200 ATU.

I hope to include a couple of my ham-radio projects in this section and the first one up will be a new Antenna Tuning Unit.