Ham Radio
Ham Radio Career
I grew up with ham radio all around me. I still remember that when we went on family camping vacation the dipole was setup before starting to erect the tents… My father (DL2LSM, ex Y24CM, DM2DCM) is an avid home brewer. Spending quality time in the ham shack as well as taking part in field days are common childhood memories. So, getting infected early with the radio frequency virus led to my first call Y2-EA16307/M46 which was an East German short wave listener license. However, some school obligations as well as the usual inconveniences in getting a license in Y2 led to a break till the early nineties. I was licensed DG0LGO in 1992. Taking part in a number of field day contests I opted for learning CW and got the call DH0LQU a year later shortly followed by DL2LSO. The latter I changed for the shorter one of DK3WE. Additionally, I am the trustee for the short call sign DM2M being used mainly in contests by our contest group or by myself.
I passed the exam for the Extra license when living in California — still with the Morse code requirement — and got the the call AD6VZ for a very short period of time. That has been exchanged shortly after for the vanity call sign KU6I which I still hold today.
Additionally, I hold the danish call sign OU2M which is being used during our family holidays on the island of Bornholm.
Nowadays, I’m mostly interested in contesting, especially on the VHF bands. We are a quite active group normally signing DF0MTL. For that purpose we built a lot of the required equipment ourselves. So, I do home brewing of a lot of stuff including but not limited to radio frequency components, digital electronics, mechanical parts etc. The picture on the right shows me operating during a subregional VHF Contest on my favourite 2m band in July 2010. The signal I’m listening to is most likely deep in the qsb…
I have been active from a number of DXCC entities including but not limited to 4U1ITU, DL, F, GW, OZ, PA, and W. However, nothing really exotic so far, but 4U1ITU.