Biography

I first got interested in radio back when I was a very young fella when a family friend gave me a set of 27 MHz "walkie-talkies" (much to my mother's disgust) at probably about the of age 10.

In my mid-teens through my involvement in St. John Ambulance Australia I was exposed to more serious communications activities and equipment.

In about 1992 I met the man that fueled the fire, Brian Young - VK3BBB, Brian is the father of a friend and he tipped fuel of the fire and has taught me an incredible amount and still does to this day!

I can not possibly express how much Brian's help and friendship has meant to me over the journey. Everyone should have a mentor like Brian, always willing to answer a question and nothing is ever a dumb question for him.

For a variety of reasons and circumstances, it took me until 2005 to obtain my Novice Operators Certificate of Proficiency with was later upgraded to Standard level with a change in regulations.

In 2011 I suffered a life-changing event which has left me with Chronic Reactive Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, this has caused me to lose focus and interest in a lot of the area's of my life including amateur radio.

So consequently my activity on the bands does fluctuate a lot, but I still enjoy the hobby and will never give it up, there just something about it that keeps me coming back for more.

My Favorite Band is 10 meters, don't ask me why it just is but I work all of my licensed bands equally but find contacts on 10 more rewarding for some reason.

My Favorite Mode: All of the digital modes, but I do like working phone when I can. At the moment I am particularly active on JT65, just getting into RTTY. Previously a lot of contacts on PSK but that seems to have died off for some reason.

2018 Saw a huge milestone in a trip to Dayton Hamvention, a first trip outside of Australia and it won't be the last, absolutely loved the whole experience of my 2 weeks in America and I will be back at some point for sure.

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Home station

Icom IC-7100 (D-Star enabled & active), End fed long wire (18 meters) into an AH-4 antenna tuner about 5 meters above ground level.

Icom IC-7300 with a Tri-band OCFD dipole (NEW EDITION) Late 2018 so stay tuned for updates on it but it is an impressive radio straight out of the box.

Yaesu FT-8900R Quad-band FM

Motorola MTS-2000 for 2 meters

On the Road

Car 1 has a Yaesu ID-880H Dual Band D-Star rig

Car 2 has an Icom-5100 Dual Band D-Star rig, a Codan NGT HF rig, and a local UHF CB radio for when out 4WD driving, and I added a Uniden 11 rig which I bought home from the trip to America for more 4WD communications options :-)