Biography

My name is Chris and my QTH is a town called Dudley here in central England. Amongst other things Dudley is famous for its castle and zoo. The Black Country Living Museum which is nearby is well known for the Peaky Blinders TV drama being filmed there. The town is located approximately 10 miles/16km "as the crow flies" north west of the central city of Birmingham. My home QTH is approximately 700ft/200m ASL.

Unfortunately back in January 2017 I suffered a life changing haemorrhagic stroke in Schiphol Airport Amsterdam whilst transferring to a flight to Rome on my wifes birthday!! This with me being only 52 years old. After having spent nine weeks in hospital between the Netherlands and the UK. it became clear that I wouldn't be returning to work again anytime soon and so I had to medically retire. I was a full time golf course greenkeeper and a part time football/soccer groundsman. Both jobs I adored immensely and it was hard to get used to life without the jobs that I loved so much. However, life goes on...................

I knew that I needed a hobby as I was going to be spending quite a bit of time at home. I decided to have another go at amateur radio. I'd gotten my Foundation licence which is the first entry level one here in the UK. back in September 2014. I couldn't really get into it then and available time was an issue so I sold my equipment and moved on. I began getting back into the hobby in January 2018 and since then have been adding to the shack when able to do so. I achieved the Intermediate licence, which is our 'middle' licence in August 2019. This encouraged me to press on for the Full licence and in fact I achieved this in December 2020.

Equipment

Radios include Kenwood TS-890S using a Kenwood MC-90 microphone, Yaesu FT991A using a Yaesu M-90 microphone, Icom ID-52, Yaesu FTM200DE, Yaesu FTM400XDE, Yaesu FT5D and an AnyTone AT-D878UVII Plus. I also operate with an Acom 700S solid state linear amplifier at around our legal limit of 400 watts over here in the UK.

Antennae include a WIMO ZX2000 mini beam for 20, 15 and 10m. End Fed Multiband with loading coil for 80m-10m, Antron 99 for 10 and 12m, a Dual PA5070-7-3 for 4m and 6m, Diamond X300N vertically polarised colinear for 2m and 70cms and a DX Commander Classic ABV.