It started with me saying no.
In December 2013, my dad, Jon 2E0CAP, asked me a fairly simple question: “Why don’t you start learning for your Foundation licence?” My answer was no. Apparently that wasn’t the right answer, because shortly afterwards I discovered that I’d been enrolled on a Foundation course at Wythall Radio Club anyway. I went along, passed the exam, got on the air — and unknowingly started something that would become a huge part of my life.
From 2 metres to the other side of the world
Like plenty of new amateurs, my first experience of radio was 2m FM. It was exciting simply being able to transmit and talk to people at first, but eventually I wanted to know what else was out there.
My dad and I bought our first HF radio together, a Kenwood TS-50, and put up a doublet. That changed everything. Suddenly radio wasn’t about who I could hear locally. It was about what I could hear thousands of miles away — and whether I could make them hear me.
I progressed through my Intermediate licence with the help and considerable patience of Jason, M0JDM. The technical side didn’t come naturally to me at first, but amateur radio quickly taught me something that has stuck with me ever since: if I don’t know how to do something, I can learn. My station gradually evolved with me. An inverted-L and an ATU got my first 100 DXCC entities into the log. Then in 2016 the VP8STI DXpedition activated the South Sandwich Islands. I wanted that QSO.
So rather than accepting that my station wasn’t good enough, I built a two-element wire delta loop, pointed it south and tried. On the second day of the DXpedition, VP8STI went into the log. That QSO probably says more about what I enjoy about amateur radio than anything else on this page. See a problem. Work out how to solve it. Build something. Try it. And occasionally hear your callsign come back through the noise from the other side of the planet.
M0SDV
After a few unsuccessful attempts, plenty more studying and refusing to give up, I passed the Full examination in 2017 and became M0SDV. But getting the Full licence wasn’t the destination. If anything, it was the beginning.
DX chasing led me towards contesting. Contesting led me deeper into CW, station building, antennas, propagation and operating technique. Eventually I became interested not simply in making contacts, but in understanding how to build and operate a station capable of competing seriously. And somewhere along the way another ambition appeared. Instead of always being the person at home trying to break the pileup, I wanted to be the person creating it.
From chasing DX to being DX
Amateur radio has since taken me much further than I imagined when I walked into that first Foundation course. I’ve operated internationally, contested from overseas and joined DXpedition teams in parts of the world I might otherwise never have visited. I’ve sat behind a radio thousands of miles from home and heard hundreds of stations calling at once.
I’ve discovered the peculiar satisfaction of maintaining a CW pileup for hours, watching the QSO counter climb and knowing that somewhere on the other end of every contact is another operator who wanted that one QSO just as much as I once wanted VP8STI. I’ve also learned that I enjoy everything surrounding the contact just as much: designing stations, solving RF problems, experimenting with antennas, building remote systems and writing software to make operating better.
The station today bears very little resemblance to that TS-50 and doublet. Neither does the operator.
Still learning
More than a decade after reluctantly starting that Foundation course, I’m still finding new parts of amateur radio to explore. There are countries I haven’t operated from. Contests I haven’t won. Antennas I haven’t built. Ideas I haven’t tried. And probably quite a few things I haven’t even thought of yet. That’s what has kept amateur radio interesting for me. There’s always another signal buried in the noise, another problem worth solving and another reason to turn the radio on.
So the final line from the original version of this page, written many years ago, still seems appropriate: What next?
We’ll have to wait and see.
73, Jamie — M0SDV