Biography

Hi All and thanks for dropping in,

Just like a number of others on the air, my early exposure to radio was during the UK CB boom in the early eighties using AM rigs, once it went to FM I lost interest, and now some 30 odd years later I'm back looking to develop a sustainable leisure pastime.

I have a weather station web site and noticed that a number of other station owners were radio hams, and that was the catalyst, I met Andy (G6OHM) through my weather site, Andy is a truly established radio amateur and with Andy's wife we both undertook the weekend training with Peterborough & District Amateur Radio Club culminating in successfully passing the Foundation test on the 13th April 14 - A few days later after logging on to the OFCOM site I registered my first call sign of M6EID.

I'm fortunate that there are a number of very active radio clubs within a radius of 30 miles of Chatteris, I took a drive out to a Friday evening meeting of the Cambridge & District Amateur Radio Club (CDARC) and found it so friendly I joined straight away and have been going as regularly as I can ever since, for me it has the right mix of experienced and helpful hams and of course a very enjoyable social aspect.

I home studied for the Intermediate License Test with the practical assessment at Foxton being signed off by Peter (M0DCV) CDARC Lead Trainer, I took and indicatively passed the exam on the 21st June 14 at Cauis College, Cambridge facilitated by Martin (G3ZAY) of the Cambridge University Wireless Society, registering the call sign 2E0DDI a few days later, I kept with the same formula of home study supplemented by the excellent program QADV and online resource Hamtests in preparation for the advanced license exam which I took on the 8th December 14, again at Cambridge but in a different campus venue. Cambridge has brought me luck as just over a week later I had found out that I had passed, pressing the OFCOM wheel of fortune button, I have the call sign of M0HTA. (Easy for me to remember as the last three letters stand for Help The Aged!)

Well that's how it started and where I've ended up (greater detail can be found in my blog pages at www.chatteris.biz) - so onto my humble setup

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Kenwood TS-2000
30m end fed longwire with Auto-tuner

Icom 7100