NEW MEMBER : F6CYK

[F6CYK]

Hello, world!

So I started in 1967 (I was 12 years old...) by discovering radio through a galena set built by a friend. I built mine and I found it magical! Gradually I became interested in the technique through a book I ate at the time: "Radio, but it's very simple" by a certain E. Aisberg. At the same time I had recovered old tube sets on which there were the "short wave" bands: I listened to foreign radio stations, trawlers and... amateur radios. Everyone was broadcasting in AM at the time, the SSB was in its infancy.

Another friend who lived next door to me, the future F6BQR, had built a 144 Mhz super-reactive receiver and in the evening, after school, we listened to the OM's of Le Havre - where I lived - talking to each other. It was then that we had the idea of visiting the "forgotten" amateur radios, those we no longer heard in HF or VHF.

And that's how I met Jean, F9HA who lived next door to the high school I was attending at the time. He lived at the time (in the 1970s) in a very small and very dark apartment on rue Anatole France in Le Havre and our regular visits, by Patrick, future F6BQR and myself (future F1BUM), made him want to resume the amateur show he had abandoned at the end of the 1950s. With enthusiasm he built a 2m-10m converter and then a 144 (tube!) transmitter, equipped with a coal microphone from the great era. I still remember the installation of the doublet (!) in his attic, in the scorching heat.

At the same time, I met another OM, F8HW, the friend Henri, a masonic craftsman. He was no longer active for several years but he recalled with nostalgia the fabulous contacts he had made in the 1950s over 10m. More than 40 years later I still remember his enthusiasm at the time: "Aaah, the Ten band, my friend !!! »

I passed my "call" (F1BUM) at the beginning of 1971, at sixteen years old. The French Post and Telecommunications inspector then came to the house to check the station and the O.M.'s knowledge. It was something very impressive! Mr. Reffet (that was his name) was inspecting maritime radio stations and the interest of radio amateurs in VHF was beyond him: for him it was only to facilitate ship manoeuvres in port environments! He had encouraged me to pass my telegraph operator's certificate, which I did two years later under his amused and benevolent guidance.

With F9HA we then had a daily QSO with F9HA on 145.325 (in AM!) which was the 18th harmonic of the military surplus quartz we were using then. It was F9HA who introduced me to CW.... He was a little bit my third grandfather....

When Jean died, I was in the army in Germany and was unable to attend his funeral. An OM from Le Havre, F1DTD, today also a silent key, had collected the archives of F9HA and he had the delicate attention to make him go on the big trip with his famous "coal" microphone from the 1940s....

Moreover, at the time, I was a fan of QRP on decametric: I had a HW7 Heathkit and a doublet in my parents' garden, place Jenner, in Le Havre... We were only a few "happy few" at the time and we looked like originals to the old OM's of the time....

I got married in 1986 and work and family activities took me away from radio. In 1996, back in Normandy after spending a few years in Paris, I visited "F2OH" (we called the Société Havraise de TSF, the oldest radio club in France). But the sacred fire was no longer there and I gave my callsign a few months later, in the 2000s...

I was listening a little from afar, with professional activity and other interests taking over.

By chance, OM's from Fécamp contacted me a few months ago, as part of my professional duties, to install a transponder on a municipal building. In addition, residing the weekend and holidays in Etretat, I also met a recent resident, OM and from Grenoble, F4ALR. And then, a few years earlier, I had found a fellow traveller of the epic years, an electronic engineer and technical journalist, author of many books on recreational electronics, Patrick GUEULLE. All this made me re-equipped it first with a Baofeng UV-3R and then with a FT-817 utopian device that I had been dreaming of since my early years of OM.

And today you can hear me on the DMR with my GD-77 and the wonderful VK3KYY's firmware and on the network of French-speaking repeaters, on UHF, VHF, 6m and 10m bands with my old friends F5RUE, F6DVK, F8TRT and others...

I sometimes walk on the cliffs of Etretat with my FT-817 in QRP, with a "Miracle-Antenna" and think back to my friend Henri, F8HW: "Aaah, the Ten band, my friend !!!"

[VK3KYY]

Wow

Thanks for you long biography ...