I have held my licence, G1PJJ, since 1985, having taken the exam whilst in Plymouth. Obviously I had to do 1986 VHF Field Day on Dartmoor – just because it was there! (Ummmm what can a pair of 4CX250b produce? Asking for a friend.)
In the 1990s I was chairman of Dover Radio Club and Controller of Kent Raynet.
My licence lapsed in 2005 as my time was taken up by work (and children).
After a chance meeting at Colchester North Station in June 2019 I applied for my licence to be reinstated. This took several weeks and a few phone calls to Ofcom (plus a fee, of course) but in July 2019 G1PJJ was back.
By September 2019 the antenna situation was like this, that’s the TV antenna on the left.
That arrangement survived the 2019-2020 winter and in early March 2020 I ordered the parts to relocate and raise the colinear. Of course, lockdown meant that the plan was put on hold until late May when a revised plan was drawn up. The first step was to remove the existing arrangement but the mounting bracket actually came away from the wall. A new bracket went up, some 1.5m away from the original site but due to a miscalculation the offset from the wall was insufficient to clear the guttering! I was left for several weeks with no antenna, eventually I ordered a magmount and a tiny dual band antenna, parking that on the steel wall bracket.
Meanwhile some steel angle iron was ordered, cut and drilled, to make extension arms for the bracket, so at last the antennas could be raised. By now I also had a 70cm yagi and I had a mast mount for a dual band whip. It was the third week of June by the time the new antennas were installed:
The yagi is directed SSW, diagonally across Essex. It didn’t take long for me to realise that to the SW I have a very poor 2m visage, but 70cm reaches into Kent. Odd.
In 2021 I managed to get a Diamond X200 in the air, from the far side of the building. This was mounted on two 10ft steel masts to clear the pitched roof (some of which can be seen in the picture above). Unfortunately Storm Eunice in Feb 2022 damaged the wall mount and it came crashing down. I had a spare X200 (the original plan was to also replace the other collinear) but needed help getting the antenna remounted.
That didn’t finally happen until 13th August.
There is good separation between the antenna installations. That’s just as well as there’s now an IC-2730 on the X200.
Update (December 2022) I now have APRS active on the ‘old’ vertical .
G1PJJ