Biography

I live in Augusta, the "island of Palme", a town built by Frederick II of Swabia in Sicily (1232). I was born on the 22nd of July 1963 in Donnalucata, a small fishing village in the municipality of Scicli (Ragusa).
I am currently retired after about 37 years of service in the Italian Navy. I was a Lieutenant (OR-9) specializing in telecommunications, archives and encryption, navigation and meteorology.
I was embarked on the destroyer ARDITO, on the training ship A. VESPUCCI, on the GROSSO corvette, on the VISINTINI corvette, on the DANAIDE missile corvette. I was also a petty-officer in charge of TLC training at the Command of the First Corvette Squadron (COMSQUACORV UNO), petty-officer in charge of operational training at COMFLOTCORV, COMFORPAT and in the N3S section at the Command in Chief of the Naval Squad in Rome (CINCNAV), for many years I was the Archives and Code Chief of Staff of the Navy Command in Sicily (MARISICILIA), first in Messina and later in Augusta.
I have sailed all over the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.
I am married to Anna and we have two daughters (Silvia graduated at the law university), and Chiara (currently studying at the University of Catania in Communication Sciences).
I have developed this passion for radio and for radiocommunications in general since when I was just 10 years old and I had in hand one of the first walkie-talkie to a channel for CB (27 Mhz). Later I bought my first radio a MAX-21 (23 channels in AM) and a ground plane as an antenna. The passion for DX led me to evolve the station with a sideband system and later (after leaving in the Navy and with the first earnings) I bought a complete Yaesu line of the 757 series with a three element Directive. In 1994 I got a class A license and in 1996 I was officially issued the station name IT9MRM.
I have been very active in voice radio and I have also operated from various Sicilian islands (Pantelleria, Lampedusa, Favignana) and from some lighthouses.
From 2013 to 2020 I was not active in the radio and only from November 2020 I started to operate on the radio again only in digital modes sometimes in SSB and CW. My station currently consists of an ICOM IC-7300 transceiver and an "Extreme Super Wide antenna" by IW2EN, for 6 to 50 MHz.

Equipment

RxTx: Icom IC-7300
Mic: ICOM SM-30
Antenna vertical "Extreme super wide" by IW2EN
Log4OM2
MixW4
MSHV/JTDX/WJTX-Z