Category: Ham Radio

Back on the air soon?

by Jurgen

logo ham radio FriedrichshafenLast weekend Jan ON4KB, Luc ON7KZ, Andy ON7TS and me went to the hamradio in Friedrichshafen (16th time in a row for me). The fair was a little disappointing, no real new things to see this time (apart from a 44m €28000 tower from Japan…). Moreover it seems there will soon only be a couple of companies left in Germany to sell hamradio gear.
The most positive thing is however that this time (for the first time in many years) we received a warm welcome at the UBA booth. Could it be this depends on the people being at the booth at the moment we arrived?

Next year the fair will be from june 23 till 26. Probably we’ll be there again.

The most important thing is however that, still not being on the air from my own shack (or from the car I bought last year), the virus hit me again during the trip. I’ll try to get my antenna’s up on the tower (HF) and probably the mobile rig in the car (VHF/UHF) in a few weeks!

I’ll keep you posted!

Back or not?

by Jurgen


Hi, I just noticed it’s almost 2 years ago I wrote something on here… this site was the result of something that started as a joke between ONL Bart, Jan ON4KB and me.
After a while some of us got tired of updating our sites and when Jan stopped his site I had so many links to update that I got discouraged. Most of these faulty links are still on this site and if I ever find the time I’ll correct/remove them one by one.

Speaking of time, the K2 I worked on so frequently is now gathering dust since about 2 years (the main unit is finished and working, the SSB module is halfway built).

In these 2 years the relationship with my girlfriend grew stronger and stronger (life changes…) and I also took up sporting more and more. (Have a look at the picture, yes I bought a new bike and I still need to lose some weight)

This combined with the company I try to run gives me less and less time for ham radio.

But don’t worry, I’ll be back! Together with some other Ham’s we are
working on a DXpedition to a rare IOTA island planned for the first half of next year!

Soon 2 new DXCC entities!

by Jurgen

Will there soon be two (or even three) new DXCC entities? According to The Economist there might…

It’s now exactly 3 months since our last elections in Belgium and we still have no government. Correction, we have no Belgian government. But don’t worry, we still have a Flemish, a Walloon and a Brussels government. So, we have no lack of politicians 🙂
Biggest problem to form a new federal government seems to be the
disagreements between the Flemish and the Walloon politicians.

Life for the rest of us, seems to go on even without a federal government. It seems even better to me for the moment. As long as they don’t agree about this new government they at least don’t make any new laws or invent any new taxes 🙂

Just wondering what our new prefix will be?

It’s over again…

by Jurgen

Last weekend I visited the Ham-Radio in Friedrichshafen for the 14th year in a row.

I can still remember the first time I went there in 1994 (time flies…) when I was a very ‘new’ radioamateur. Things were quite different back then, the ‘weirdo’ level was higher, with some people really dressed as HAMs, wearing (military) transceivers on their backs or hard hats with an antenna. Almost noone would dare to come into the ‘Messe’ if he/she wasn’t proudly wearing his callsign(s) somewhere on his hat or clothing. The parking lot was an assembly of porcupines, every car had at least 2 antennas, the bigger the better. At night you couldn’t find a free frequency on any repeater anywhere around Friedrichshafen. Kenwood, Yaesu and some others were competing to have the biggest booth and to present at least one new world class rig (see also Death of a Radio Company). Wimo was already there but didn’t have a booth 1/3 the size of the hall. (Wimo keeps growing and taking over the smaller companies, and whether this is always good for us the customers is another question…).

Does this mean we were disappointed in this Ham-Radio? No, of course not, we (ON4KB, ON5HC, ON7KZ and I) had lots of fun and we met a lot of old friends and acquaintances. One of them was Sean EI4GK with whom I was at Little Saltee (EU103) in 2004. Sean is one of the Officers of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society which had a booth at the Ham-Radio for the first time. We missed Lulu and Ingvar from Sweden this time though…

Some things haven’t changed over the years though… It has happened several times in those 14 years and again the welcome at the UBA-booth was disappointing… This seems to depend on the people who are at the booth at the moment we arrive. We don’t want any hugs or kisses and we don’t even want any free drinks but hey guys, when we approach the booth of OUR association, you could at least say hello to us.

As I have written here before I have gotten into building kits since last year and my main goal for this rally was to try and find one or more new kits to purchase. But it seems that noone is building those anymore, I did not find one kit (for HF) on the whole rally… I guess I’ll have to look for some new toys via the internet again.

This was the cheapest Friedrichshafen in my HAM-carreer, as I didn’t really find what I wanted I couldn’t spend the budget I had. (In the meanwhile the budget is spent, I ordered some accessories for my K2 directly from Elecraft but that will be for an other article.)

Now the question: will we go to Friedrichshafen again next year (for the fifteenth time)? Of course, this is our annual pilgrimage… and maybe we could have a little party for this anniversary? Moreover we can’t live without the ‘Bratwurst mit Brötchen’ and the ‘Hefeweizen’.

Will I ever go to the Dayton Hamvention instead? I don’t think so, at least not as long as all foreigners wanting to visit the US are treated as criminals… If things go on like this, sooner or later we will all need to have a microchip behind the ear like the dogs here in Belgium before we can enter the US. Sorry but Big Brother is watching us enough already.