Biography

Since 2008 I no longer act a a QSL Manager for N6TJ or JA1BK, these duties were passed to AI4U.

So any QSLs I receive are returned to sender as refused mail at my end so you get your dollars back and I do not use the dollars to tell you AI4U is now the QSL MGR.

I am now active on Hamsphere 3 & 4 so QSL's and logs for my Hamsphere activity are on Hamsphere only not here.


Short bio; First licensed in 1962, while a ships radio operator in the Royal Canadian Navy on HMCS Haida . CW is still my primary operating mode. While in the Navy I operated from HMCS ALbro Lake the primary ship shore commercial marine radio station CFH (prior to this service being transferred to the Canadian Coast Guard under call VCS) and two ships, the first HMCS Haida VEØNV/CGJD operated portable from VP9, VP7 & KP4, second was HMCS Bonaventure an aircraft carrier and the Callsign VEØNE/CGLE and operated Portable from VP9, ZB2, ZB1, ZC4, GM, G, & F. Sorry no logs for these club stations.

In 1968 I went to Tanzania, East Africa and worked as a Game Warden anf bush pilot. I lived in Dar-es-Salaam and was licensed as 5H3LV. I also held other East African Callsigns, 5Z4LV, 5X5LV and 5H1LV from Zanzibar. I also operated from Seychelles, Zambia, Burundi, Rwanda, and Botswana, as VQ9G, 9J2LV, 9U5LV, 9X5LV, and A2CAV. In 1975, 76, I was flying under contract to Air Afrique in Dakar Senegal flying to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Rabat Morocco, and several other West African cities but had no time for operating.

When I left the Navy I became VE3EUP in 1964 and in 1985 change my callsign to VE3HO. I have held numerous other Canadian Callsigns over the years, VE2EUP, VE2VY, VE1CDX, VE1UD, VE4UI, VE7AUE, VE7PT, VE7AM, VE8HO, VE4UI, plus many special prefixes from VE3HO and VE8HO. I also was an operator at several special event stations - CI8C, Resolute Bay, NWT as part of the Russian/Canadian Transpolar Ski Trek 1989(Polar Bridge) communications support team (Feb to June of 1989) and in May 1980 our communications team was invited to Russia for 3 weeks in Moscow and St. Petersburg - CI2O in 1967 from the Montreal Olympics, Montreal Quebec.

In Jan 2003 I retired to enjoy life after four careers. The first as a Naval Radio Operator (CW) for 3 years. The second as restaurant manager for 3 years, The third as a Commercial Airline Pilot for 16 years and the fourth as a Marine Service Technician for 20 years.I worked as a Commercial Airline Pilot and Flight Engineer, starting in the fall of 1966, I logged over 7,000 in the following 14 years of flying, over 6000 hours as Captain. Flying in the Canadian Arctic, East, West, and North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the Caribbean, Central and North America, from bush planes on floats, to forest fire bombers to flying boats, Twin Otter, to the DC8.

In 1982 I left my nomadic ways as a commercial pilot and settled down here near Niagara Falls Ontario Where I am still living and became a Marine Service technician in the commercial marine industry. My Navy and flying experience and training had given me the hydraulic and electronic experience I needed for this job. My specialty was hydraulic steering systems ships including autopilots , but I worked on many other systems that were controlled electronically and operated hydraulically.

My computer experience eventually took me away from service work into the office in 1995, doing purchasing, importing, pricing, web pages, catalogs, spreadsheets, accounting, and the like. We first retired in January 2003. While retired we still did a bit of contract work with computers and the internet as well as the occasional service job for my old employer. When the need for school bus drivers for our community was announced I drove a big yellow bus from Sept. 2003 until May 2008. By this time there was a surplus of drivers in the region and unemployment was growing and so we retired again to do other things, going back on retainer for my old employer in the marine business until Nov 2011. so I am now fully retired now and pensioned off.

In the fall of 2008 I took my HF station down as I could no longer climb and maintain my large tower and antenna stack and my pension income could not handle this expense of paying someone else to do the maintenance, so

in 2008 when I went off the air I was No 1 Honor Roll for DXCC, had 5bdxcc and WAC, and many other awards.

today in 2016 I can be found on HAMsphere (HS4) frequently but seldom on HS3 , for me HS4 is the closest thing to HF for someone like me and I can take this into a retirement home when the time comes. Having done it all on real HF I am now working my way up the ladder in the Hamsphere 4 world.

In the 1990's I was a member of the DX advisory committee for ten years serving as Chairman for two of those years and I also served on the DXCC 2000 ARRL HQ committee in 2000/2001


VE3HO

Equipment

When I was active I had Kenwood TS930 and TS940 transceivers a Alpha 77 linear including WARC bands, my 64 ft tower, had the rotator in the base and a drive shaft to the top with antennas 4el wide space on 20m home built beam, a 30/40m 2 element center loaded home built beam, and a
Force 12 15,17,12, and 10 m beam, the mast extended 26ft out the top of thetower and was 3 in OD at the bottom, resting on 2 truck wheel bearings, each antenna was on its own mast fed up through the 3 inch main mast so everything could be lower to the top of the tower to work on them individually. For low bands I had a n inverted L for 160m and 3 1/4 wave slopers phased for 80m. My transceivers started wtih Kenwood Heathkit HW100 and 101 and progressed to TS820 and FLQ2000 linear amplifier starting in 1978 when I move to the Niagara District. Lost one tower due to wind storm in 1982 and quickly rebuilt everything with rotator in base as in the original guyed tower rotator it was half way up tower and that is where it failed in high winds. After this failure We also went to free standing tower. the second tower was still operational in 2008 when it was taken down.