Biography

PLEASE CONFIRM QSO's

Hi and thanks for looking me up. I'll start by saying that I'm six decades old and I live in the North West of the UK in a small place called Horwich (about 15 miles from Manchester). I've been interested in six things since being a young lad - cars, motorbikes, photography, art and radios (I'll let you guess the sixth).

I passed my Foundation Licence Exam in February 2019 and have been encouraged to go straight into studying for the Intermediate Exam but the truth be told - I don't want to yet. There's plenty of time for that later. Right now, I look at the Foundation Licence as a set of "L-PLATES" and I feel like I should work the radio and enjoy my 10W for a while. Most of my interest in radio is QRP so I'm not lusting after more power at this point. No doubt that will change later though, LOL.

I have built up my 'Radio Shack' in a corner of our Hobby Room. This neat and tidy room was originally our "Art Room" (we both paint) but now it has become the place where we go to do anything including painting, radioing, etc.


Equipment (at time of writing) includes...

* ICOM IC-7610

* ELAD FDM DUO

* ELAD DUO-ART

* ICOM IC-7100

* YAESU FT3D HT

* YAESU FT-818ND

* YAESU FT-290R

* ALINCO DR-735E

* KENWOOD D74 HT

* MFJ 993B AUTO ATU


My main area of interest is QRP because I quite fancy taking a radio with me when I go hill-walking with the Mrs. So with that in mind, I got an ELECRAFT KX3 (with the built-in ATU and the 2M board). It's a beautiful thing and has amazing 'ears'. It's as light as a feather and I'm really looking forward to doing some SOTA work.

I'm trying to get to grips with DSTAR on the Kenwood TH-D74 and so far I've managed to input a few Reflectors and had many a good QSO with people across the world using around 10mW!!

Having recently acquired a tiny Yaesu FT-818ND, I decided to try it out using (unusually) an Elecratft AX1 Telescopic Antenna whilst sat in the back garden. To my amazement, it worked fantastically well and I made a great contact with a guy in Denmark using just 2.5W. Love it!

400km/Watt is not that special on its own - I know that - but what impressed me was that I was using this little 17/20M telescopic attached directly to the BNC connector of the FT-818ND while sat in the garden. A far from ideal location/situation. Hats off to Elecraft (once again) for making good stuff!

In addition to the radio hobby, I'm also a biker, a photographer and an artist! So, that's enough about me. Feel free to drop me a line on M7MCQio83ro@gmail.com I'd be pleased to hear from you.

VISIT MY BLOG >>>> www.m7mcq.com

73, Tom McQuiggan.





COUNTRIES WORKED SO FAR

Asiatic Russia
Austria
Belarus
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
Canary Islands
Crete
Croatia
CUBA
Denmark
England
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
IOM
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Luxembourg
Moldova
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Rep. Kosovo
Romania
Russia
Scotland
Serbia
Slovak
Slovenia
Spain
Switzerland
Turkey
USA
Ukraine
Wales

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

* Icom IC-7610