A few nice cards received via the bureau

I've just received a delivery of QSL cards from the IRTS bureau. There were some nice ones, which are pictured above. Included in the bunch was a card from E51MCA, South Cook Islands, and my first ever card from Kyrgyzstan, from EX/HB9DUR. There was also a card from Minami Torishima, from JG8NQJ/JD1. Other countries included South Korea, West Malaysia, Kuwait, Svalbard, Ogasawara, Chile and Monaco.

A few nice cards in from the IRTS bureau

I got a delivery of QSL cards from the IRTS bureau today, and there were some nice countries included in the small pile. I'm particularly pleased to receive cards from 5W1SA Samoa, A52AEF Bhutan and AH0BT Saipan. I got several cards from South Korea, which is unusual, plus some from Japan, and one from 9H Malta, OH0 Aland Islands and 3A Monaco.

A lovely birthday present - an award from the IRTS

I received a lovely present yesterday (Sunday) for my 40th birthday. I was awarded the Sheila Piper Cup by the Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS) at its annual general meeting in Galway. The IRTS makes a series of awards each year at its AGM, including presentations for winners of various contests and for other achievements. The society also honours radio amateurs for service to the society or to amateur radio.

The Sheila Piper Cup was presented to the Society by Jim Piper in memory of his late wife Sheila.  The cup is presented for service by an individual to the various IRTS news media, i.e. Radio News, Echo Ireland, EiNews, web site, social media. This year the cup has been awarded to yours truly, EI2KC. It was accepted in my absence by Thos EI2JD, who picked up the cup itself and a perpetual plaque, both of which are already inscribed with my callsign. Here is a photo of Thos presenting the trophies to me last night:

As you can see, I forgot to take off my 'Birthday Boy' badge which I was wearing on the occasion of my 40th birthday. Many thanks to the IRTS for this wonderful honour. Of course, I will continue to do my best to promote this fantastic hobby of ours, something I've always enjoyed doing.

Licenced four years ago today - what a wonderful hobby we have

This was me with my test results the day I received them.

Four years ago today I got a very special phone call. I had just left work and was on my way home on a Friday evening, thinking that I would have to spend another long weekend waiting for good news. But a phone call came. It was a Dublin number. I answered. It was Derek from Comreg. He was sending out my licence in the post, but was ringing to tell me my callsign. I can remember it clearly. He spoke very slowly . . . "Echo . . . India . . . Eight . . . Golf . . .  (and then an indescribably long pause!) . . . HOTEL . . . bravo". He asked for an email address so he could send a PDF copy of my licence and I could operate straight away. I was elated. I thanked him generously and bid him a good weekend.

I hung up the phone, and immediately called out through the Dundalk 2 metre repeater. Tony EI4DIB came back to me for my first QSO as a licenced ham, and at that moment a great adventure began. Following years of interest in the hobby of radio, I was finally a fully fledged radio amateur.

My first ham station, pictured in winter 2009.

The four years since then have flown by. I can remember using my Icom 718 and a half-size G5RV which was only about 12 feet off the ground during that first couple of months in winter 2009. Sunspots were non existent, and the bands were closed every day by the time I got home from work. I had only 40m SSB to sustain me through the winter, because the half-size G5RV wouldn't tune there. And I hadn't yet learned CW. Soon, I had a Kenwood 570, and in early 2010 I got the Butternut HF6V up and running with the help of Tony. I started to learn CW. It took me about a month, maybe a little more, and by February 2010 I was already working contacts on CW. I took the test at Coolmine that month, with my lifelong friend Brian EI7GVB. We both passed. I became EI2KC on March 5th 2010 and within a few days he had received his new callsign - EI4KC.

The station grew, as did the antenna system. An MA5B minibeam followed, as did 40m and 30m inverted vees. The DXCC count went up steeply. I was working far-off places with a hundred watts, morning, noon and night. Stuff I could only have dreamed of. From a small garden I was, quite literally, working the world. I was following a passion which had been ignited when I was a teenager, and my older brother was a CB operator, and later a ham. I worked DX on 11m using an old Silver Rod from my boyhood home. Now, I was back chasing DX again, years later, and feeling good.

One of the nicest aspects of the hobby though is the camaraderie and the friendship. I have so many friends in the hobby; people of all tastes and interests. Some of them love HF and DXing. Some of them don't. Some of them are shortwave listeners. Some are VHF enthusiasts. Some of them live in far-off countries. Yes, ham radio unites people, across political, geographical and religious divides. Everyone has their niche in ham radio. But all of them are friends, and in the long nights of winter, and even in the balmy days of summer, there's always someone on the other end of your CQ, waiting for a QSO or a good ragchew.

Morse code opened up the world to me. This is the J-28
morse key which I used to learn CW, borrowed from EI2HX.

Four years on, with DXCC worked on eight bands and a total of 295 DXCC in the bag, I'd never have thought I would do so well so quickly. I guess it's the passion. I have been stuck in some horrendous pile-ups, for hours on end, rattling out my callsign on a morse paddle like there's no tomorrow, fighting with the rest of the world for that glorious "5NN" and a new country in the log. I have lost some battles, and I have won some. Thankfully, I've won more than I've lost. What a terrific hobby this is. We can communicate using just a piece of wire or metal and the ionosphere, contacting people in some of the most remote places on earth. Oh yes, this hobby is glorious. Who'd have thought I would contact someone on a rock jutting out of the ocean called Malpelo? Who'd have thought I'd work Pitcairn Island of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' fame, on 80 metres CW, in a narrow two-minute greyline opening? Who'd have thought I'd chat with people who have gone to the ends of the earth for the hobby - in Antarctica, Marshall Islands, Western Kiribati, Jan Mayen Island, Sable Island, Galapagos, South Cook, Austral Islands, Kermadec, Yemen, Somalia, Myanmar, Marion Island . . . the list goes on and on and on.

And this coming month, with any luck, I will be battling through more pile-ups, for rare and far away places such as Wake Atoll, Juan Fernandez, Banaba and more.

But in addition to all this DXing, I have been involved in other areas of the hobby. The local clubs are a great source of friendship and social interaction with other radio enthusiasts. I have been involved in contests and portable operations and even an IOTA dxpedition. I am on the committee of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society, and write the HF Happenings column for the society's magazine, Echo Ireland. It really has been a fantastic four years. Here are some of my stats: I've had 19,163 QSOs. I've worked 301 DXCC (6 deleted) and confirmed 280 (4 deleted). I've worked 287 DXCC on CW, 256 on phone, and 131 on digi modes.

Enjoying a bit of craic during AREN (Amateur Radio
Emergency Network) training with Derek EI7CHB and Pat EI2HX.

Ham radio brings the world into your home. And far from being an old fashioned, outdated pastime, amateur radio is very much a modern pursuit, encompassing technologies that are under constant development. OK, we may be the only ones left in the world using morse code. But we also combine computers with radio for genuine experiments in telecommunications. Some of us speak with astronauts on the International Space Station. We broadcast images on amateur television. We bounce signals off the moon. We push new horizons all the time, using weak signal propagation modes to make contacts that were previously impossible. Some of us make our own radios and antennas. Others monitor the bands for incursions and illegal activity. Many of us are involved in emergency communications, showing that the hobby has a civic and community side. In the event of disaster, radio amateurs provide communications when mobile phone networks and power grids are down.

What a wonderful hobby we have. Thank you to all those who've been there along the way. Thank you to all my ham friends, in Drogheda, in Ireland, and all over the world. It's been a beautiful journey so far. And we have so much more to look forward to.

Some time on the air as EI80IRTS

The Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS) is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year and as a result the special callsign EI80IRTS has been on the air since January 1st. I was recently asked by Ger EI4GXB and Thos EI2JD if I would consider operating on CW as EI80IRTS.

Since I now have an interface that can key my radio, the ICOM IC-756PRO, I decided I would give it a go. Over the past three days I have logged about 700 QSOs, a great majority of which were made with just 100 watts. The higher bands have been in great shape.

Much of my time was spent on 10m and 12m, early in the mornings for Asia and Pacific and late in the evenings for North America. I have had Australia, Japan and Singapore in the log in the mornings and lots of west coast USA in the evenings. I am using N1MM logger to log the calls.

I am very happy with my rate when there is a pile-up, but with changing band conditions, it's not always possible to have a pile-up!! I was running at 32wpm, which is a bit on the hot side, but I want to get used to going along at a good pace because I want to start taking part in more CW contests.

The ups and downs of QSLing

One aspect of amateur radio which can be both rewarding and frustrating is the exchange of QSL cards. I get a lot of QSL requests in through the IRTS bureau. Having processed some 700-800 cards over the past number of months, I had the pleasure yesterday of sorting all the outgoing cards into continents and countries so I could send them to the outgoing manager. Above is a photo showing the sorted cards. It can take a number of hours to process each incoming bundle and fill out the return card and mark everything off in the log. This amount of cards probably took about five or six hours to process. It is a time consuming business!

On the slightly less frustrating side of the QSL bureau is when you get some nice cards incoming. Today I received 183 incoming cards from the bureau. There were quite a few from the 'usual suspects' including Germany/Sloevnia/Bulgaria etc., but some nice and unusual ones too. Above is a card from JD1BMH, Ogasawara Island, which would be a new DXCC confirmed. Also on left is DP1POL from Antarctica. Other highlights include ZD8W Ascension Island, 9M2TO West Malaysia, and a bunch of cards from Japan. Nice.