YO3BN - How I Became an Amateur Radio Operator

Last edited - 18th May 2017

How I Became an Amateur Radio Operator

It is something more than amateur radio, my story begins like this:

When I was just a child, I have found my uncle's notebook of electronics. Many strange drawings were in there, but they were enough to make me curious. After many years I realised that strange drawings were nothing more but simple full wave rectifiers, diodes, capacitors, transformers, nothing special. I kept that curiosity over the years, it motivates me to understand how things works, on what kind of planet we live, how to create things and many more.

When I was a high school student, I wanted to have my own TV antenna to see what can I receive on the TV set, model SIRIUS 208. A friend of mine gave me a broad band antenna amplifier named TELECANAC made with four BFR-91/96 transistors, low noise, 20dB+ gain at VHF/UHF, I didn't knew that at that time. Well, many days in a row I scanned VHF and UHF bands to see what I can receive. Beside that television stations somewhere on VHF I saw weird appearances on the screen while someone was saying something. I listened that transmisions for a long time, they seemed very interesting to me.

Someday I was going to high school with the local bus and I seated in front of the bus, suddenly I heard same voice I heard on my TV now on the driver's radio. At that time a big connection I made in my head: that stuff heard on my TV set was radio communications between local services. So, I was able to hear police, ambulance, taxis and many more just with my TV set and my antenna. That was so amazing!!

Then after, I was wondering if I could receive those radio communications on an ordinary radio, so I tried to connect that broad band amplifier to a series of radio sets found at my house. Surprinsingly, it worked, based on intermodulation interference. The signal was amplified too much for that radio set so its front end was driven as crazy, mixing radio broadcast stations with radio communications ones. But shortly I realized that was not the right way and I decided to buy a portable 88-108 MHz FM radio set in order to modify its oscillator coil. After some modifications I was able to raise its frequency domain above 108MHz, I heard an airport VOLMET station, I raised the frequency domain further more and finally discovered same radio communications heard on my TV set. I had no idea about on which frequency I was at that time. I modified many radio sets since then, ones didn't survived to my mods, others didn't supported that high frequency, anyway I was happy because there was no need to carry the TV set with me to listen to those interesting radio communications.

I remember about a nice prank, I was listening to a big taxi company in my town and to convince myself about their realtime communication I called a taxi nearby to see if I can hear the taxi operator dispatching the command, so I heard her indeed, then I went down on the street to see that taxi and I saw it too :-)

Meanwhile I continued to read some books and magazines about electronics and radio communications. Someday listening on VHF radio commuication, somewhere at the begining of band I heard some people speaking about filters, antennas and electronics, I was puzzled! I thought they were some sort of service of electronics troubleshooters. I listened to them very long time, again I made another discovery! They were just people who talking at the radio station just for fun or as hobby. That sounded very very interesting to me! I never ever thought that such a hobby could exist!

Then many nights and days followed while I was listening to that people who spoke about electronics, words like amateur radio, antenna, amplifier, yankee, oscar were often heard on the air. Then I made another astonishing connection between yankee oscar three charlie oscar heard on the radio and YO3CO which was the signature of the technical writer at Conex Club magazine (Ilie Mihaescu YO3CO). So I understood that letters together forms some sort of a callsign or something and a license is needed in order to transmit, but how I could get one I was asked myself... I didn't found the answer that time.

After graduating from high school in 2004 I bought a pair of 446MHz PMR walkie talkie, model Binatone MR200, my parents bought to me a PC, then connection to the internet became widely available, so I was few steps closer to the ham license.

Later in 2006, inspired by Conex Club magazine (7-8 2002) and internal circuitry of Binatone MR200 walkie talkie, I made a few high quality VHF receivers using cheap MC3361 and MC3362 ICs. Those receivers had very good performance in terms of selectivity and sensitivity, they had squelch too.

I made new friendships over the internet and PMR band, some of them were actually amateur radio operators, so they told me about ham licence and shortly after I was licensed as CEPT ECC REC (05)06 ham member in 2008, later in March 2017 I have passed the CEPT HAREC T/R 61-02 examination.

Nowadays I enjoy more the lower part of frequency spectrum VLF, LF, MF, HF combined with CW and SSB modes. Despite those disadvantages regarding physical size of antenna, the lower frequency spectrum offers many other advantages like low path attenuation, wide area coverage, simplicity and more.

I really apreciate that you spent some time reading my story.

All the best!
Cristian, YO3BN

73 de YO3BN