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Hello fellow Astronomers, Radio Amateurs, Astronomers, CB’ers and SWL’s

I became interested in Amateur Radio in the late 1970‘s after discovering ways of transmitting signals to a medium wave radio when I was about 11 years old - although I only transmitted a few meters it was the start of the radio bug for me. I was under 10 years old!!

My interest in radio was boosted as a teenager when I discovered CB radio in 1980 and dreamed of owning one of my own. In 1981 somehow I managed to persuade my dad that it was a good idea if he bought a CB, since 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 I wanted to know more. Still it took me until 1988 to finally get licensed.

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

I am also a member of the Norman Lockyer Observatory Society and have a keen interest in Solar observations and their relationship with radio wave propagation, climate change and other weather phenomena.

In 1997 my brother (also licensed) and I experimented with an early PTT style VoIP program called “Pow Wow”. Those early experiments kindled a technical interest in linking radio via the internet. At that time we still used dial up modems so an infrastructure systems was unrealistic.

Along with other local Hams we later formed the Exeternet VoIP project to cover the difficult terrain in our part of Devon using networked RF based Internet links. This project has been very successful and encouraged greater activity and interest in radio locally, with a number of new foundation licenses also issued in the area.

Now I’ve moved to Calne, Wiltshire because of work commitments and have set up a VOIP gateway here too, When operational it is also linked with the Exeternet Gateway Cluster. The Calne gateway has limited range and is mainly a test-bed for further project development, but is also available for other users most days.

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About Mike, G7FEK

A very brief history of how I became interested in radio.