Greetings,
this blog has been dormant for quite a while, mainly caused by involvement in work and studies which limit my abilities to engage in freetime activities.
So before I start telling you about HAAROB CBM2012 I would love to give you a short update on my situation relating to amateur radio and shortwave listening.
I successfully became a HAM during my studies in Southampton, UK, and was licensed under the callsign 2E0SGP, however, intermediate licence callsigns cannot be accepted by the German authorities, therefore I had to find some way to become a proper HAM in Germany.
One way would have been to go for a German exam in order to become licensed, however, due to the fact of having been in the matter of HAM stuff using mostly English as language for studies and communication, I decided to go for the US Exam instead.
First plans were to attend the Hamvention in Friedrichshafen, the largest German HAM trades fair and exhibition. However, due to the long trip from here to southern Germany and the expenses involved it would not have made much a difference to sitting a German exam. Gladly the great folks of “Peine PileUp People” (another German HAM-Club) offered an exam at only 70km drive from here… you can imagine how willingly I decided to attend that exam.
On a Saturday morning I took my mom’s car (thanks mom!) to get there. The US system permits you to sit all 3 exams (Technician Class, General Class and Extra Class) on one day, as long as you do not fail one of the exams you only need to pay USD 15 for the exam. I took the technician class easily but messed up a bit on General Class, so I repaid 15 bucks to resit the General Class, passed and then took the Extra without big issues at all… that is the story behind the callsign AK4LT being issued to me.
Once I had the US callsign I was able to apply for a German callsign, and a few weeks and calls with authorities later I was glad to go on air with the callsign DL1SGP, as you can see it references to my first callsign from the UK.
Since then I have been able to invest some money into my shack, run more than hundred QSOs (mostly in digimode but lately am getting fun from SSB as well). Today I decided to join the local group of the German HAM Club DARC, so as you can see things still are progressing.
Vy 73,
Felix – DL1SGP