William Stevenson - G4KKI - NAQCC # 2424

(The first picture is in my shack and I took it today [6/3/08]. The second one was taken in Cornwall at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum last summer, it was where the Atlantic cables came ashore and the photo shows me operating a mock up of the Titanic radio room. The Spark transmitter was an original of the type used aboard and operated when keyed.)
My name is Bill and I am 59 years old. My main interest is in CW on the HF bands.
I have been operating CW since I was 15 years old when I joined the Army as a boy, i left school aged 15 in 1963 and January 4th 1964 saw me on a train heading to the South West of England 300 miles away from my home in Manchester in the North West , i had never been away from home before.
I trained as a radio Operator in the Royal Corps of Signals. I served just over 2 years at the Junior Leaders Regiment at Denbury Camp in S Devon. At the age of 17 i graduated into the regular army and was one of the very first to leave Denbury and get posted straight out to a regular unit in Germany as a qualified tradesman. I served in Germany for 3 years and then came back to England where i joined the Para's, a Royal Signals unit. i then went on to serve in various places around the world, operating mostly CW.
I became a Radio Amateur in October of 1980 and have operated with QRP and home-made gear for much of that time. My first QRP rig was a HW7 which i modified a lot and worked my first VK and ZL stations with it.
Today I now have a FT-840 ,an MFJ-9040 ,a Wilderness radio SST-20 ad other small home made transceivers for CW.
I like to operate in the mountains and take part in the SOTA program (summits on the air) i enjoy backpacking a lot and find QRP CW is
great from on the trail.
I live in a small house with a tiny back yard in the very centre of town and i have very little space for outside antennas and am not actually allowed them !
So i have 2 home made magnetic loops inside my loft. With these i can operate on 80/40/30mtr on the larger one and 20 - 10mtrs
on the smaller one. I do have up a (invisible !) very low and not very good short loaded inverted V for 40mtrs in my back yard but that is about
the only outside antenna i can get up.
Despite this i still work QRP and i get my fair share of DX, recently i worked the VP6DX station on 40mtrs with the indoor magloop. I look forward to meeting many of the NAQCC on the air.
73/72 de Bill G4KKI #2424