Hi all,

My name is Fokko Veenstra and I live in Friesland, a northern province of theNetherlands. I work as a programmer/web designer and I’m currently 47 years of age.

Most OM’s on the HF bands will know me as Floyd. I use that aka name because my real name pronounced in English has caused some problems in the past. During a stay in Great Britain I was once asked for my name by two police officers. I was immediately handcuffed because the officers thought I told them to FO. Fortunately the misunderstanding was quickly solved after I had asked them to check my passport which I had in my inside pocket. They released me and even apologized for the misunderstanding, UK policemen are usually very friendly.  

At least I have a nice story to tell at parties but I decided on Floyd to avoid trouble like this in the future.

I past my Novice exams in 1981 and intended to go for the full license right after that. But due to circumstances (working abroad) I had to quit the hobby for a while. As it turned out ‘a while’ slowly turned into 25 years.

In the summer of 2008 there was the Friese Radiomarkt (Frisian Radio Fair) which is not far from here. Because I had the day off I went there and got immediately hooked again. I renewed my license and got my old callsign PD0MRZ back. I bought a FT817 QRP 5W set and to my surprise I was able to make many contacts on 10 meters. There was a lot of propagation going on the 10 meter band at the time and even with such low power and a simple 20 meter longwire from my balcony to the nearest lamppost I was able to have QSO’s all overEurope, Russia and Ukraine. And on 20 meter even with the US and Asian counties.

Because I like homebrewing and QRP I recently made a BitX20 the ‘dead bug’ way. Currently I am working on a MMR-40 and I make my own PCB for that. I have the next project already planned: a TAK-40. These last two are both winners of the ARRL homebrewing competition 2008.

My callsign PD0MRZ was a little long, especially for hard to copy QRP DXing, so I recently changed it into PD8F.

Greetings from tulip-country,