Biography

I have been an SWL on and off for over 50 years. In 1981 I took and passed the then RAE which only gave one access to 2m and above, with the callsign, G6RFD. I spent a lot of time in the early 80's on 2m, both SSB and FM. Marriage, family and work consigned Ham radio to the 'back burner'. In 2000 I took and passed the 5wpm Morse test which gave me the callsign M5RFD. I was quite active on the HF bands for a few years until I got disillusioned with the "5,9 73's" sort of QSO. I rejoined the ISWL (International Shortwave League) 4 years ago and I use my membership number as my SWL number. I now only listen, to both Broadcast and Ham bands, and am usually active most days.

Edit March 2020; I have now become interested in CW again and am trying to build up my speed. I spend a lot of time now on the lower ends of the Ham bands. I'm beginning to get the callsigns, just not the rest of the conversations! If my CW improves well, I may get back on the air with my M5RFD callsign.

February 2021: Most of my time now spent on the CW end of the bands and code copy is improving. This is due to both interest and QRM. The QRM issue is local LED street lighting. I have in the past done a lot of Shortwave BC DXing and reporting. However, the levels of interference on AM makes it almost impossible to hear any low-powered stations. However, with the great DSP filtering on the Yaesu 450D, I can remove most of the junk. Of course, CW being a narrow mode, facilitates this very well.

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Yaesu FT-450D with homebrew 1/2 size OCFD fed with coax. I am finding this a better combination than the previous doublet. Via the built-in ATU on the 450D, this antenna will load on all bands (if I ever transmit again!). Other receivers I use are a Tecsun PL600, Tecsun PL660, Tecsun PL-310, and Tecsun PL-365.
Bespoke Linux laptop running Ubuntu 20 used for logging and other duties.