Biography

Hi, I'm Bert, DL8BDF.

My preferred operation mode is CW with QRP.
I hang out on 80 thru 10 meters with a half wave trapped vertical R7000; which isn't a bummer but I can quickly switch from band to band ;-)


Ham biography:
I have been licensed since 1972, started with a novice callsign and did the upgrade to class A in 1992.

Interest in radio reception began at the age of 5 when my father gave me a simple detector for AM (medium wave) reception. It was fascinating to hear radio stations without any power supply! But each time I had to find a new position for the tiny pinpoint contacting the sparkling lead oxide crystal.

Later as a school boy I did experiments (still with detector receivers but now with factory built germanium diodes) with various antennas, different coils and multiple tuned parallel L/C circuits to accomplish a better selection but I soon learned that this way also looses signal amplitude.
I even used detector radios with my bicycle; it was the hard way to learn about the physics of short, trapped antennas and the efficiency of ground systems.
Back then I got lucky when American Forces Network (--> AFN Bremerhaven) appears in my headphones.
Although I didn't understand much it was really exciting (might have been the presented music, hi).

After 20 years of VHF DXing I decided to 'switch over' to HF. A FT890 TRX got me on the air immediately but soon I discovered the challange to operate QRP with rather simple but homebuilt CW rigs - of course kits for one single band.
My first homebuilt QRP rig was a direct conversion, where you always had to regard the right sideband. Next project was a 'NorCal 40A' QRP kit, a monoband transceiver for 7Mc, 2 Watts RF output with a simple and clever concept. Nevertheless the 4 matched crystals gave a bandwidth of only 400Hz! Had a lot of joy with that small blue box, which was developed by Wayne N6KR, who later on becomes a founder of the Elecraft company! This was followed by the 'Norcal 38s' QRP kit, a very simple monobander for 10,1Mc. But the 40A outperformed the 38s by far!

This period was followed by a factory built QRP rig, the black QRP cube Index Labs 'QRP+' providing all HF bands and even SSB at abt. 5 Watts out. It was the great time when certain QRP reflector lists (like QRP-L) in the internet offered useful support for homebrew and modifications.

Then Eric, WA6HHQ and Wayne, N6KR founded the Elecraft company. They planned to develop a brandnew and really smart QRP rig (K2) and asked for special features which we hams would like to see implemented in hard- & software. This was totally new behaviour, no other Hamradio company in the world did this before and after.
From then on I was hooked! Soon I got my almost fully loaded K2 (kit version) which I used exclusively for about 10 years at home while the FT890 collected dust.

When the hardware development in Aptos for their new flagship has settled down (which took a few years) I upgraded to the K3/10W which is a real monster - but this is another story ;-)

This way CW QRP for me continuous to be fun. Only in rare exceptional cases a FL7000 helps to participate in pileups.

Because I suffer from lots of interference, radiated by TV sets in the neighborhood, my preferred times throughout the week for HAM operations start at local night, right after the TV prime time - unfortunately the reason for lack of sleep.

vy 72

Bert, DL8BDF