Biography

I was first licensed in 1954 as VE3DPV. I hold the Amateur and Advanced Amateur certificates and am a Fellow of the IEEE. I was trained as an Operator, Wireless & Line at Signals School, Canadian Army Signals Corps, CFB Borden.
My mentor was Al Hunter, VE3DZ. He gave generously of his time and knowledge to help a kid get licensed. Thanks, Al.

I work mostly cw. [There's a mike somewhere in the shack, but I'm not sure where.]

I QSL via LoTW; I generally don't send paper QSLs. ONE IRC is not enough! Canadian postage costs have risen, so you must send TWO IRCs or TWO GREENSTAMPS.


In December 02 I operated S21/VA7DZ from St Martin's Island, Bangladesh, in the Bay of Bengal, using my K2 at 10 watts, MixW on a Sony palmtop for logging / rig control, and a Sigma 5 vertical on the roof of the motel. The rig and laptop were battery powered, using trickle chargers to recharge them overnight from the motel genset, and the whole station fitted into two carry-on bags, plus one gym bag for the antenna. It's a light-weight, low-cost way to run a DXpedition and it worked FB, [until the genset went overvoltage and blew the stepdown xfmr], getting 599s from Sweden, good reports from Asia & Africa, and serious pileups from Japan. It's great to be on the sending end of a pileup once in a while.

I enjoy building, CW contesting & DX, and antenna farming.
My friends - VA7KH, VE3AOD, VE3BXi and VE3CFK - and I have won Canada First Place in ARRL DX test twice, ARRL SS twice, BC first place in BC QSO Party once and World FIrst Place in QRP ARCI once.

Equipment

K3 + 500w
TH7 and Optibeam 16-3 triband yagis
160m inverted L
80m vertical
40m phased array, soon to become a 4-square
4-el folded-element 40m Yagi, if we can get it erected...