Biography

First contact with radios was in the Fifties, building an own radio. Several other projects followed and in 1969 I got the amateur licence as DC9QR. Activities were on 2m first in AM, using crystals for the transmitter, later I got a VFO and bought my first SSB-transceiver. A bit later activities on 70cm started, most of them portable.

Then a CW training began in our local radio club (F47) and we all were successfull and got the A-licence. Bulding big antennas was one of the activities in our local radio club and we were active in a lot of contests. After a long time of being not QRV I started again when I retired.

On HF I am using the FT 857D and prefer the digital modes, especially JT65 and JT9. Sometimes my old FT301 is activated, too, normally for SSB-DX-QSOs. I like that old radio very much because of its nice audio. On VHF and UHF I am still QRV with my old FT221R (Mutek frontend) and the FT 790R, but not so active there.

For the digital modes I use an Acer Aspire One netbook and an Android tablet for Echolink. My "antenna-farm" is not very big, I use dipoles and verticals for HF and a collinear antenna for VHF and UHF.
In 2016 I sold the old FT301, the FT221R and the FT790R. A FT450D and the XIEGU X108G took their place in my shack. And there are two new antennas for HF, two End-Fed Antennas (one for 80-10m, the other for 40-10m), one is direction north to south, the other east to west. Although they are at only 6m above the ground they work very well for me.

For the digital modes there are dual core laptops and a PC now in my shack. I also built the BITX40 transceiver for 40 m and played around with SDR components.

Equipment

FT 857D/FT450D/Xiegu X108G
HF 100W /2m 50W /70cm 20W
GP/LongWire/FD4/Collinear/End-Feds
Dig:30-50W HRD/DM780/WSJT-X