About Me

Early Adventures in Radio

During my teenage years I spent many hours scanning the shortwave frequencies on an old Heathkit Mohican CG-1, purchased at a radio rally at the Kempton race course.  I threw a long wire from my bedroom window, over the roof, to enhance the built in telescopic antenna, the results were outstanding and suddenly the world was available.  As CB gripped the country in the early 80's I bought myself a "rig" and with the help of a neighbour got online.  I won't try to remember what it was or the antenna, but as a teenager it was a lot of fun.  More info on the  Heathkit radio here.

I never recovered the Heathkit radio from my parents house when I left home for the forces, and so have no idea where it went, but I can guess. 

We knew that the opposition, across the wall, had recordings of our voices and tracked our movements between units and locations by our voice-print.  They did however struggle with the Glaswegian and Gurkha operators, as did the rest of the British Army!!

The Clansman PRC 349 VHF/UHF was section radio for short range communications and way easier to carry.  The radio was worn over a shoulder and used a throat mic and single ear headphone strapped across the head.  The coverage was no better than one of today's Baofeng hand held radios but again was Squaddie proof, designed to thrown about, dropped and mistreated in every way possible (and often was).  It was a good exercise when these were issued, no setting up masts or sitting on an exposed hill in all weathers keeping a repeater company.

Back into civilian life and I continued to listen to shortwave and chasing local US radio stations on AM in the early morning static.  I was given a "scanning guide" by a friend, a book GCHQ were not happy about, and I delved deeper into scanning for a while.  But life events overtook me in the early 2000's, I needed to concentrate on a real career and so the hobby faded into the distance.

In recent years I was a long distance "ultra" runner, racing once a month or more, between 30 and 100 miles.  But a nagging pain, bone on bone injury in my hip, put pay to that and I needed to find something more sedate to concentrate my mind on.  It was not until I was on the school run one morning and my son asked what the aerials on top of a house were, he was surprised I knew exactly what they were, so was I.  At home I did a web search about the licensing and discovered that since covid all had changed and the license was more achievable (and no sign of  a morse requirement). 

I signed up with Essex Ham distance learning and booked an exam for two weeks after the finish, just to ensure I took the exam and it was fresh in my mind.  The course was well designed and catered for all level of starters, including me, and on 18th Dec 2023 I passed my exam.  Now the journey begins....