Biography

First licensed in 1990, I operated sporadically maritime mobile between 1990 and 1999 while I was at sea in the merchant navy. Between 2000 and 2010 I operated even more sporadically as my work took me all over the World but never leaving me long enough anywhere to get on the air much if at all. Now settled back in EI, I've more time for radio and am a bit more organised about it. I'm a (not sufficiently committed) member of the very successful contest brigade that is EI7M, the East Cork Radio Group and of EI5CRC, the Cork Radio Club. Some years ago, I was inexplicably made an Honourary Member of the Ilford RSGB Group "for having shown extreme humour in the face of amateur radio". To this day I don't know what I did or said, but I'm genuinely pleased that whatever it was it made someone laugh...

EI4HQ QSL Information:
LoTW (weekly)
Bureau (monthly)
Direct (on receipt)
eQSL (automatic upload after each QSO)
Clublog (automatic upload after each QSO)

I ALWAYS reply to cards I receive; sending me a paper QSL guarantees a card by return either direct or via bureau depending on how I received the incoming card. I generally don't send out paper QSL cards these days however, except when it's a new one for me and the DX call is not on LoTW.

I'm manager for the following additional calls:

EI100T: Titanic 100th Anniversary special event station on air throughout 2012 from Cobh (Queenstown) the Titanic's last port of call. See QRZ.com for details.
[EI0TEN: EI0TEN was formerly a 10m CW Beacon on 28.209MHz.]

Equipment

During 2017 into 2018, I've been completely rebuilding my station and so have not been on air much. The work is heading toward completion now and when done will consist of the following:

Antennas:
6m to 20m: 2 dipoles for each band, one beaming NE/SW and the other ESE/WNW. All 12 dipoles are one half wavelength above ground on their respective frequencies
30m, 40m & 80m: A homebrew ground mounted quarter wave trapped vertical; this antenna is also my inverted-L for 160 metres - see next
160m: A quarter wave inverted-L with a circa 19 metre vertical section and a 32 x 0.15 wavelength radial ground system that is also meshed together with a 64 quarter wave radial ground system originally installed for a 40m vertical that's since been decommissioned
LF/MF/HF Receive: K9AY. In 2018 I'll be installing two bi-directional beverages (each x1 wavelength on 80m) running E/W and SSE/NNW.

Rigs:
Yaesu FT-2000 (primary on 160m - 6m). I've done the AC0C roofing filter modification and I've an SDR-IQ connected via the IF-2000 board that gives me a spectrum scope display
FT-817ND with BHI DSP board (primary on 2m & 70cm)
Kenwood TS-450SAT (on permanent propagation monitoring duty)
Airspy HF+ (on permanent Navtex DX monitoring duty)
SDRPlay (on permanent NOAA APT satellite monitoring duty)

Bands, Modes & Activity:
See my website for latest info; http://86.43.106.118/
I'm focusing on increasing my country and band/mode totals and on contesting. I've mostly been a CW operator heretofore but am venturing up onto SSB more and beginning to dabble with digital modes as well
My primary on air activity is unassisted low power (100w) contesting
My other major pastime is homebrewing antennas
I've a lot of utility listening capability (it's how I got into amateur radio) including ADS-B, AIS, NAVTEX, Marine DSC, HF Weather Fax, NOAA APT weather satellites and HF weather RTTY. I contribute to various data aggregation efforts for a number of these modes - see http://86.43.106.118 for more information