I first became interested in amateur radio at the age of 12 - my father took up the hobby and I spent many, many hours listening to hams on the short wave bands.  My dad was first licenced as G8DYT and then later as G4ATA.  At the age of 13 I built my first battery operated, single valve receiver a H.A.C. DX1 and later added another valve .... again I spent many hours searching for and listening to radio hams.  After the H.A.C. kit my dad got a Trio 9R-59DE and I was using this for my listening pleasure at every opportunity.  As I grew older I found interest in other things (girls for one, then motorbikes etc) and my interest in amateur radio waned somewhat.

I got married in 1981 and moved from my home town of Scunthorpe to Wakefield in Yorkshire in 1984.  This was the time when the amateur radio bug bit me again.  I cannot explain just why but it did and I attended the local college in Wakefield and sat the RAE course and passed the exam and was licenced as G1UDF in 1986.

I spent quite a lot of time on 2m chasing DX and collecting locator squares much to the disgust of my XYL (now my ex XYL!!).  She told me that Amateur Radio was an old man's hobby and said that there would be plenty of time for me to "play radio" when I was old and infirm!!

My dad regularly teased me about my class B callsign and used to ask me when I was going to sit the Morse exam and get a proper class A callsign!!  I wasn't much interested at the time - I was having too much fun chasing the DX and locator squares on 144MHz.  To me HF was just far too easy!

After my dad passed away in January of 1989 I was clearing his shack for my mum and I came across his RAE pass and licence documentation.  As I was looking through this I could hear him saying to me "When are you going to get a proper callsign?" so I though it would be a nice way to remember him by and take the CW test, pass it and have his callsign re-issued to me.  I then made a serious effort to get my CW speed up to the required 12wpm to pass the test.  I managed that in August of 1989 and have been licenced as G4ATA ever since and very proud of it I am too.  Hopefully, my son, Martin will do something similar after I "pop my clogs"!!  Fingers crossed it won't be for a few years yet!

For quite a few years after getting my class A callsign I was still only really interested in 2m DX and was rarely heard on the HF bands.  HF was usually a means to arranging SSB MS skeds for 2m!  For various reasons I have had some quite lengthy breaks from amateur radio sometimes prompted by earache from my XYL.  She went QRT at the end of 2001( ...... OK, OK, so I left her!) and from then until the beginning of 2007 I was living at QTH's where antenna space was severely limited.  I moved to a larger QTH in January of 2007 and I then had plenty of room for antennas ....... all I had to do was keep my landlady and landlord sweet!

Due to my other interests (my Mini and my bike) the first antenna didn't go up until August 2007 - a dipole for 80m.  I found 80m great fun and a real challenge sometimes trying to work the DX so when I'm on the air I'm usually on the prowl for "a new one".  I again moved QTH in July 2010 so the challenge was on again to get DX stations in the log from a much smaller location. Click on the 'My Station' button below to see details of my current set up.

My son, Martin, has been licensed as 2E1FVS since he was 13 years old - nearly 15 years now.  He can sometimes be heard operating my station which regularly leads to confusion.  We sound very similar and even regular contacts have difficulty in telling us apart!