Biography

My short name is Nico, I was born in March 1977 (I'm 36) in the town where I still live in ( Avola which lies onto the south-east coast of Sicily island )

I used to look at a radioamateur's antenna situated along the street where I and my family were in the habit of having a walk on Sundays. It was something that fascinated me.

I started enjoying this beautiful hobby, believe it or not, by getting a couple of those so called "walkie-talkie" toys and playing with my sister in 1988. While using them I could hear CB voices and it was kind of a torture not to be able to talk with them and my father told me I needed a CB radio, so, then I had fun on CB with a transceiver my grandmother gave me as birthday present. That was the time I got ill since as I realized about worldwide communications on SSB, so, of course, I tried anything possible to get myself all necessary devices to work DX.

On 26th of October 1999 I got my ham radio licence: I was really excited.

I used a cheap 10 m. transceiver (President Lincoln 26/30 Mhz) for more than 10 years till summer 2003 and now I’ve got a better radiostation!

Other interests of mine at this present time are: bodybuilding, my motorbike (600 cc. DUCATI Monster year 2000), listening to any type of catchy music, learning English (also French and a bit of Spanish), photography.

My dream: to travel around the world not only by the airwaves!!!

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

TRANSCEIVERS
Icom IC-7300 HF & 6m

Kenwood TS-870 HF

Icom IC-706MKIIG Mainly for VHF/UHF or 6m monitoring

Kenwood TM-V7 VHF/UHF

AERIALS
Vertical X-200 for V/UHF

LZA-5-6 : 5 element Yagi for 6m by LZ ANTENNA

LZA1 40/30 : Rotative dipole for 30/40m by LZ ANTENNA

LZA-9-5 : 9 element - 5 band Yagi for 20/17/15/12/10m by LZ ANTENNA

Home-made inverted V full size wire dipole (unfortunately close to the roof) for 80m

Rotative dipoles for 10/15/20/12/17/30/40m on single boom and single feeding line (made in Italy)

Feeding lines: M&P Ultraflex 10 / Hyperflex 10 / RG-213 / RG-58

ACCESSORIES
P.A. SPE Expert 1.5K-FA

Rotor Kenpro KR-450XL Yaesu G-1000DXC with ERCkit (rotor control device) and PstRotator (software)

CW paddles Bencher BY-1 and BY-2



E-SSB audio chain by BEHRINGER

MIC2200

DEQ2496

EX3200

MDX2600

DSP2024

FX2000

Audio Technica AT2035 condenser microphone


Sony MDR-7506 headphones

HDSDR (software) and Softrock (device) Spectrum scope for the TS-870

Winlog32 logging software