G3VDB - the background

Looking back over my 70+ years, I don’t remember a time when I was not interested in Electronics. As a child of the 1950’s, that interest was first radio and then television. By the mid 1960’s it was more generally 'Electronics' as computers and programming came to the fore.

Brought up in Northern Ireland, it was a remarkable sequence of coincidences that ensured that, from the age of 12, my mis-spent youth was two or three evenings a week in a smokey Amateur Radio Club in the centre of Belfast; The City of Belfast YMCA Radio Club, (call-sign) GI6YM. After spending a few years Short Wave Listening (as International Short Wave League member ISWL GI-11322), in autumn 1965 I took the relevant licence examinations. I was issued the call-sign GI3VDB in March 1966.

When not at GI6YM, most saturdays were spent at the home of Barney Patterson, GI3KYP (now ‘Silent Key’) . Barney’s contribution to technology in general and to Amateur Radio in Belfast was prodigious. I attribute my career in electronics and computing directly to Barney. Many other amateurs and engineers benefited from the open-house hospitality of Barney and his wife Anne.

From 1967 to 1970, Manchester University (G3VUM) provided new acquaintances and opportunities: operating a KW2000B from a cramped store room in the Students’ Union accessed through a door adjacent to the Gent’s toilet; the use of a three band two element ‘Quad’ on a tower on the roof; an expedition to St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly to operate from the lighthouse under the hospitality of Lord Onslow.

At school, I became curious about teleprinters and the radio mode we call RTTY (for Radio Teletype); I found a description of the Creed 7 in a text book. This explained start-stop asynchronous transmission, the 5-unit code used for Telex and how the transmitter and receiver maintained synchronisation. I acquired a Creed 7B and became one of the first Northern Ireland (GI) stations to be on RTTY. That interest in data transmission continued during three years in Chelmsford, but the time available for Radio declined when I moved to Manchester in 1973.

As work demands began to diminish, I returned to the hobby in 2007 with the discovery of PSK31 developed by Peter Martinez (G3PLX) . Things had changed in the intervening years!. Equipment was commercial but of a performance (and relatively low price) we could only dream of in the 1970’s. Computers were extensively used for all manner of tasks, in many cases with free software. Simon Brown’s Ham Radio Deluxe gave be all the data modes of interest at the time and an electronic logbook that I still use as my main logbook to date.

By 2009, I had discovered the RSGB 80m Club Contests, had managed to wrap an 80m dipole into a garden not capable of a 40m linear run and was making a reasonable impression in CW (Morse), RTTY/PSK (Data) modes and slightly less effective on SSB (Voice / Phone). I was invited to join The Tall Trees Contest Group, a small group of contesting enthusiasts, led by Brian G3UJE and Jim, G3KAF. That close relationship remains to this day and I contribute to most of those contests between February and July each year.