Hello fellow radio amateurs, CB’ers and SWL’s

I am an electronic design and software engineer living in Calne, Wiltshire. I became interested in Amateur radio in the late 70‘s after discovering ways of transmitting signals to a medium wave radio when I was about 11 years old.

My interest in radio was boosted further when I discovered CB radio in 1980 and dreamed of owning a radio of my own. In 1981 somehow I managed to persuade my dad that it was a good idea if he bought a CB since at the time we were living in a remote part of North Wales and we might get snowed in!!. In fact we did get snowed in that winter but the radio didn’t help much. It was a great tool for making new friends though.

I was living very close to the Arfon vhf voice repeater (GB3AR) and I could receive its signal on an old broadcast receiver. I heard radio amateurs for the first time and wanted to know more. Still it took me until 1988 to get licensed - just shows how lazy I really am!!.

Over the years I’ve played with many areas of radio technology including television transmission, slow scan television. I ran a packet radio node for a while but packet radio sort of died a death when the Internet became popular. But still its nice to know that the work us radio amateurs were doing leads to things like GPRS and mobile Internet What would the world do without us? !!

So why the Gateway ?. - Well I needed a way of communicating with my brother, 200 miles away, via radio. I played with Echolink Via the Bracknell repeater and it worked. I was even more impressed with the open channel nature of eQSO and thought this is just what Devon needs to wake up all those sleeping hams. Thus the Externet voip project was born.

Now I’ve moved to Calne, Wiltshire because of work commitments and have set up a voip gateway here too linked with the Exeternet Gateway Cluster. My gateway is mainly a testbed for project development but is also available in the Calne area most days.

Our latest gateway goes online under the callsign MB7ILO. This VHF voip gateway operated by Iain (M1OOO) of our Sidmouth Radio Group will also be linked in to Exeternet.