About me
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- Last Updated: Sunday, 14 February 2021 23:33
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As a teenager I already had many interests in everything that had to do with transmitters. As a 13-year-old I made my first connection as a radio pirate with a Jostikit, a small transmitter on a 4x4cm print and a transmitting power of about a hundred milliwatts. Since the stability was hard to find, the fun was soon gone. So looking for something better, I got a schematic diagram from a fellow radio pirate Radio RMC, (now also licensed radio amateur with the call sign PDØPOH) a 4-stage transmitter good for 1 Watt. So I bought a piece of printed circuit board and a handful of parts, the soldering iron in hand and just build. That went a lot better. A nicely stable signal in the FM broadcast band good for the necessary connections from Amsterdam to Hilversum, Amersfoort and Utrecht. Later built a stage behind it (good for 10W) and a stereo coder for it provided connections from Amsterdam to Overijssel and Friesland and so on. Since this could not go on forever (the 'Radiocontroledienst' (the Dutch Federal Communications Commission) was quite active at the time), I decided to pick up the study books and get my 'D' authorization for radio amateur. After the successful examination I was allowed to call myself PDØOAQ from 20 June 1983. Purchased two-way radio, antenna on the roof and soon the first connections were a fact. But since the possibilities were limited, I finally made the decision to continue learning for the 'C' authorization. Successfully passed the exam in 1988 and on April 26 of that year PE1MPW was QRV. Many evenings were filled with experiments at 70 and 23 cm in broadband and full duplex. But yes, a person always wants more, so from time to time I have made attempts to master the signaling and recording of Morse signs. Unfortunately I have not succeeded in this yet, but since the morse requirement expired in mid-2003, I still bought an HF transceiver so that experimenting with antennas for HF could begin. In that time it also became possible to choose your own call sign, so I traded in PE1MPW. My current call sign is PE1ER. Since the space for large short-wave antennas is rather limited, I started with a 14m sloper. Well, it worked but everything was said with that. Since that thing was really too short for a reasonable connection at 80m, I only put together a 2x10m open dipole at the end of 2004 and connections have now been made with Argentina, Asian Russia and South Africa to name a few. Furthermore, I am currently working on numerous digital modes, with which very weak signals can be used to make acceptable connections. The 2x10m open dipole has since been replaced by a HighEndFed wire antenna for 80,40,20,15 and 10m.