Biography

My first licence was at a Novice level, with 5 words per minute at the morse key, and my first callsign was VK3VCL from October 1995. But the story started a bit earlier.

When I was six years old, in 1962, I was invited by my grandfather Luis CE4CL to his laboratory/shack, where he was moving knobs on a box full of amber lights, and after some adjustments to moving needles inside several small boxes, he eventually started to talk to a strange object wired to the box. Without understanding what was going on, I then realised he was trying to call my uncle Alberto CE4AW, who was 300 km away from us. When he replied a few minutes later, I thought that was magic.

From then on, I was up very early visiting the shack and listening his transmissions on AM mode, and in some occasions the rare DX to other countries during that Solar Cycle 19.

Later on on my Novice days in the 90s, I was able to call DX on 10 and 15 metres, on a dipole I managed to build. I have always liked wire antennas. And yes, my QTH was small.

In 1996 I upgraded to my advanced callsign VK3CWX, passing the 10 words per minute morse examination, and discovering 40 and 20 metres, where everybody was. These bands were a dream. I was slowly approaching the up solar circle, and things were great. Still on dipole antennas.

In 1997 I changed my callsign to be VK3SO, which I inherited from my good friend Bruce McCubbin who recently became a Silent Key. His daughter contacted me and offered the transfer to me. It was a great honour.

With the help of David VK3EQ (now VK3CTT), Keith VK3FT, Ross VK3MY, Emil VK3TET (now VK3ET), Eduardo VK3EEG and many others, I was able to install a tower, a Cushcraft A3S 3 element tribander for 20, 15 and 10 metres, rotator, and of course the Heil microphone, so DX was a must almost every day. Great days!

A few years later I took a long break from radio activities and I regrettably lost the callsign due to illness. I eventually came back to the frequencies by acquiring the callsign VK3SFG in 2010, which I still keep up and running.

But luckily in 2020 I was able to get the VK3SO callsign back, and that is now my current and primary ID.

Equipment

TS-50
FT-857D
FT-710 AESS