G4BWB - Born Again Radio Amateur

Some fifty-two years ago, as a schoolboy, I was introduced to the wonderful hobby of amateur radio, which has brought me so much pleasure and lasting friendships over the years.  After a silence of twenty years, I re-emerged in 2007, as sort of ‘Born Again’ amateur in the guise of 9V1RA.  There is something magical about this hobby that I just can’t grow out of.

SWL ROBERT ANDREWS 1967
QEH BOARDING SCHOOL BRISTOL

In 1967, my physics teacher, Richard Pavey, G3PXM, sat me down and introduced me to an Admiralty B40 receiver.   Dr. Dick, as Pavey was known, had set up a radio room in order to engage pupils in a healthy extra- curricular interest and as a welcome escape from the daily Dickensian awfulness of boarding school.   From the initial whistles, buzzes, static crashes and other cacophony emerging from the B40 came voices I can still recall today - G3VUC, and G3KNE, amongst others.  A few days later, Dr. Dick arranged for a man called Mr. Harold Leonard to give a talk to us about amateur radio.   On my next release home, it transpired that Harold and his wife were old friends of my mum and dad.  That sealed the deal and from that moment I became terribly interested in radio.  Harold Leonard was the sort of jovial uncle everyone would want and was the source of great encouragement to youngsters eager to find out more about radio.   He was known to all as “Uncle Len”, G4UZ. 

Another great source of encouragement came in the rotund pipe-smoking form of Maurice Wilkins G3YOH, who warmly greeted me into the fairly newly formed Shirehampton Amateur Radio Club, in 1971. Maurice was just the best front-of-house man any radio club would need to welcome newcomers.   I have had an association with Shirehampton ARC ever since.  I’d also like to posthumously thank Maurice for introducing me to beer and Italian Opera.

By this time, I had enrolled on the MPT Radio Officers course at Brunel Technical College.   I had applied to become a domestic TV engineer, just like Colin G3YHV, but I walked into the wrong interview room!  So radio was now firmly part of my life.  On 15^th February 1973, I became licensed as G4BWB.  My great joy from this event was crushed on 13^th March 1973, when train enthusiast and station inspector, Dennis Hedges, condemned my state-of-the-art F.G. Rayer designed top-band transmitter as a device that promoted stronger harmonic radiation than the frequency it was designed for.  Yet, two weeks later, over a cup of tea and a conversation about trains, Dennis relented and allowed me back on the air.  I had done nothing about the harmonic issue!  

EARLY G4BWB (1973?)

During the years up until 1985, radio was an all-consuming interest.  I was very active on 160M, as well as HF.  I was also very engrossed in the running of Shirehampton ARC.  However, on the 20^th April 1987, I had a QSO with Clive, G4NAQ.  At 10.30 AM, I switched off and remained off the air for the next twenty years.  These were the wilderness years dealing with ailing parents, marrying and bringing up a family and trying to earn a living.

G4BWB 1976

G4BWB IN 1974

G4BWB IN 1985

In 2007, having lived for many years in Singapore, the chap who ran a business next door to mine asked me to watch a film he was editing, which he told me would not make a lot of sense to me.   When, I realised that this was a film about a DX-pedition to the Antarctic we were both amazed that we had been next door to each other for years, without realising we were both licensed.  James, 9V1YC, is well known around the world for challenging DX-peditions and as a great CW man.  Then, about a year or so later, I was out buying a part for my bathroom tap when I sought shelter in a shop door way as the heavens opened with great ferocity.  When I turned around, I discovered that the shop was full of ancient amateur radio equipment, so I invited myself in for a cup of tea.  Frank Aw’s shop literally creaks under the weight of old radio gear.  He ordered me to attend the next meeting of the Singapore Amateur Radio Transmitting Society (there doesn’t appear to be a receiving society).  The late Peter Cook 9V1PC (G4NCA) lent me a TS830 and helped me put up an aerial and in January 2007, after my government station inspection, I came back on the air as 9V1RA - creator of pile-ups.

For twenty years I had drifted away from amateur radio.  In the beginning, it had been the amateur radio community who had welcomed me and encouraged my interest.  Now, in 2007, it was the Singapore amateur community who had encouraged me back into the hobby.  But it is more than the wonderful friends I have made that’s been the binding force that has kept my interest even during the dormant hibernation years.  And that’s really what the point of all this garbage I have written is about is coming to.

It’s hard to explain to a generation of internet communicators, what the draw of amateur radio is.  I’m not sure I have the answers.   More than ever, though, we need people like Len G4UZ, and Maurice G3YOH, and my Singapore friends to welcome newcomers in order to secure a future for what may well become a fading hobby.  So what draws me to this hobby?  Well it’s the magical element I mentioned at the beginning. I make no other comparison between myself and Marconi other than the belief that we have both shared something quite wonderful. In Degna Marconi’s book, ‘My father Marconi’, she tells the story of how Marconi’s mother was summoned upstairs to the attic room in the Villa Grifone, which Marconi had secured as  a laboratory, despite protestations from his father.  What she witnessed must have been a truly magical moment.   When Marconi pressed the telegraph key a bell quietly tinkled at the other end of the room.  Between the key and the bell was nothing but air.  It must have been similar to the kind of moment that I still feel whenever I transmit the equivalent power of a 100 watt light bulb (or much less)  into the air and get a reply from the other side of the world.