Biography

I was born in 1964 and I´'ve got my license in 1997.
My first call was DG4ACC. In 1998 I extended the license to class B with complete access to all legal amateur radio bands and outputs and got my new call DJ1WF.
My activity in amateur radio decreased rapidly after my son was born in 1999 and I built a small house in 2000 for my family and myself.
After the new QTH was finished and the son became older I began setting up my shack.
My main activity in amateur radio is ATV. Corresponding to my favorite mode, I use my shack mostly to develop and build technical equipment for ATV such as baseband units, TXes, RXes and so on. A very special favourite of mine is to develop, build and run equipment for ATV-transmissions via laserbeam.
One result of these laser-activities is the very first optical input in the THz-range on a ATV repeater in the whole world. Now there are some other ATV repeaters with an optical input, but DB0TVH was the first one ever.
For details, please have a look at http://www.mydarc.de/dj1wf (German language)
or http://home.arcor.de/W_Fritz/Laser (shorter English version).
In 2007 Tom, DL9OBD and myself performed the long distance record for ATV-transmissions via laser. We sent a color ATV signal via laser over a distance of 83,3km. We know there are other and longer distances transmitted via laser, but they all made narrowband transmissions, no ATV. An ATV signal is a broadband signal und needs much higher signal levels than CW for example. So it is much easier to get a narrowband connection via laser than a broadband one. The ATV signal quality over the 83,3km distance was quite good, so we expect much longer distances if we could find another location with a line of sight more than 100km.
Depending on the activities on higher frequencies, my activities in shortwave are poor.
But I like to use mobile equipment mostly on 40m during longer travels by car.
It is not so often, but sometimes my QRL sends me some miles away from home.
In such a case I take my Icom IC735 and fix it on my car's dashboard. My Antenna is an Outback1899, antenna length 1,70m.
100W output combined with this short antenna is normally enough for fine QSOs through Europe on 40m and worldwide QSOs on the higher bands.
During good conditions, I also worked an American station on 40m with my mobile Equipment on the way to QRL in the morning, and I cracked a pile up to GB2HI on Hilbre Island during my way back home on the motorway A7 somewhere between Kassel and Goettingen in Germany.
Beside my mobile activities on shortwave, I also use mobile equipment for ATV, too. The ATV TRX and the antennas are completely homemade.The car is a leased one by QRL, so I am not allowed to install equipment or antennas permanently. The only way to fix all the antennas is to use magnetic antenna mounts. Sometimes, there are five magnetic antenna mounts with different antannas on my QRL car's roof

. . . to be continued . . .

Equipment

SSB and FM: Icom IC-735, Icom IC-706, Standard C5200, Standard C568, Baofeng UV-3R, Puxing PX777
ATV: Homemade 23 cm TX, and 23cm PA with 4 x 57762 >80W out, 13/23cm homebrew portable ATV TRX, 10 GHz home made ATV LNB TX, homebrew 650nm Laser ATV TX 100mW max. and homemade 455nm ATV-Laser-TX 1W max. Homebrew 400-900nm Laser ATV RX