Biography

My first amateur licence was G7GND in 1989, which I upgraded to G0SWG in 1993 by passing the 12-wpm morse test. In 1995 while living on Long Island I took the 20-wpm morse test and the five amateur tests, and got the US callsign AA2WX, which expired ten years later.

I am a fan of CW, and I enjoy contesting and digital modes. I am handy with a soldering iron.

In 2004 I came to Thailand for work, and have been here ever since. I reactivated my UK licence while visiting the UK in 2014, and from that I was able to get a 5-year reciprocal licence in Thailand, HS0ZLW - valid from 2014-08-01. I upgraded that to the Thai Advanced reciprocal licence after that licence expired.

Thailand has small allocations on 160m and 80m, but has full allocations on all HF bands from 40m-10m. Sadly, the only other band available is 2m (144-147MHz). There is no allocation on 6m, and no allocations in UHF or higher.

I am active evenings, weekends and public holidays (basically, when I'm not at work), mostly on 10m and 15m, and rarely 40m

At the beginning of 2016 I succeeded in getting the DXCC mixed-mode award via LoTW. In 2018 I got DXCC for CW mode.

I also like to help the local DX club E20AE operating in contests, particularly for CW since enthusiasm for the mode is not high in these parts.

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

HF:
Icom IC-7610
(Icom IC-718 for nostalgia's sake)
IC-705 for portable, with wire antennas
Diamond CP-6S 6-band antenna
Bencher BY-2

VHF:
At home - Yaesu FTM-400DR
Portable - Yaesu FT5D

My power supply is a LiFePO4 100AH battery wired to a solar panel - free power!
Mac Studio wired to the IC-761000 for logging control and digital modes. I enjoy FT8, FT4 and RTTY, as well as listening on all digital modes.