Hello, my name is Piero and I was born in 1962. In 1974, while reading a book, I casually discovered the world of radiocommunications on short waves and suddenly became a BCL (BroadCasting Listener), collecting QSL confirmations from all over the planet, using a Grundig Satellit 2100 receiver and a Windom antenna 30 meters long. Some years later I entered the radio amateurs world as SWL with the callsign I1-1414/TO, increasing my interest for the DXing and experimenting with various home made antennas, from simple dipoles and verticals to yagis and cubical quads. In 1983 I served in the Italian Army, first at the Transmissions School in Naples, where I learned Morse code and traffic procedures for CW and RTTY operations, and then as Radio Operator at the "Cremona" Command and Transmission Department in Turin.
From 1984 I am married to Annamaria and we have two daughters, Evelina and Marinella.
1983: The Italian Army Transmission School in San Giorgio a Cremano near Naples.
I was first licensed in 1987 and here I was operating my FT757GX.
My shack in the 90ties: TS940S and TL922. A lot of fun and DX's!
In those years I have been honoured to collaborate with Mauro, I1JQJ, redacting the weekly "425 DX News", till nr. 240 when I had to quit due to cronical lack of time and life's changes.
In that period I was also packet-radio manager for the local radio club "A.R.I. Nizza Monferrato", mantaining the IK1IYU BBS and developing high speed links for the local Flexnet node until 2002, when Internet become more accessible to the public and the packet-radio network collapsed. Than I lost interest in DXing and Amateur Radio in general.
In 2003 I learned to fly RC airplanes and developed a great passion. I build and fly electric models and gliders now, and during the good season you will find me at the flying field rather than on the radio!
This is a panoramic view of my QTH Montegrosso d'Asti, taken from a remote camera flying on a RC glider.
2011: CW and digital modes, that's my prevalent activity on the air.
2012: A blast from the past.
To celebrate my 50th birthday I have done something crazy: I have got an Ebay acquisition on my youngster radio dream, a Kenwood TS-830S.
Very little information except that it was working and completed by the external VFO-230 and speaker SP-230.
As acquired everything was rather grubby and dusty internally, having clearly had some use and probably having been abandoned for some time. The radio was cleaned up inside using a dry paintbrush and a vacuum cleaner, outside (cabinets, front panels, knobs, buttons) with water and dish cleaner. With my great surprise, everything inside looked as brand new, even a pair of original japanese S2001A tubes!
All contacts has been checked and cleaned up and the radio completely aligned.
A new matched pair of 6146B tubes have been installed and neutralized.
No additional IF filters were originally fitted, so a YK-88C filter bought from an EBay trader and a very rare YG-455C bought from I1NDB (TNX!) have been installed. The radio was about 30 years old before it was so treated!The results are, however most pleasing.As my preferred mode of operating is CW, this is a real bonus. And this is the final results:
110/120 watt output on all bands and a superb receiver. And it looks like new!
The TS-830S is now my primary HF CW-only transceiver, and she still rocks!
Talking about results: Not bad for 100 watt and a doublet antenna! (note the test contact on SSB)
Working TX5K, Clipperton Island DXpedition, on 30 meter has been my greatest gratification ever!
My antennas: due to the limited space available and neighbourhood's restrictions can't aspire to much more than this:
A two elements Yagi for the 10-15-20 meter bands and an home-made trap-dipole for the 12-17-30-40 meter.
With these I entered the DXCC HR SSB/MIXED in 1997. Now I am trying to do it again in CW.
Lately, after the 830 line's acquisition, I have substituted the trap-dipole with a doublet antenna (you can see the ladder line in the picture) that performs amazingly well on all bands from 40 to 10 meter with the TS830S running barefoot. I am really impressed from the performances of this kind of antenna, every contact is a big surprise. I am starting to name it "the grandpa wires".
By the way, the station's computer is only for general logging purpose (hei, I'm using a paper Logbook and a pencil!) and for RTTY/Digitals communications. This is old style DX'ing and I am really enjoying Ham-Radio again!
Last addition to the line, a rare Kenwood HC-10 World Clock:
A known issue with those is the lack of a battery backup and they completely reset every time power takes a hit.
I have done a very easy modification, adding a 9 Volt battery with a 1N4001 diode to keep the clock on during power outage.
The battery is connected outside the HC-10 cabinet.
During power outage you will only miss the display.
2013: Yaesu 50MHz module for the FTV-700 transverter.
I have been looking for this module for a very long time, and finally I found one on Ebay: it was listed as "not working, for parts only" but I decided to give it a try. In reality, it was looking good, but with signs of some temptative of repairs on it.
Installed in my FTV-700 it showed up as being fully functional on the transmitting side with solid 10 watts output, but totally deaf in reception.
All the active components were good except a varicap diode tuning the input coil, but after this repair nothing changed.
I finally found out that the input coil was shorted and I had to rewind a new one using a Toko 10K coil: the receive sensivity problem was solved.
I am now using the FTV-700 wired to my Kenwood TS940S with 10 watts to a home made single element Delta Loop for the 6 meter band.
With the first E-sporadic openings in May 2013 the first QSO was UT5JAJ, than G8MIA, G3UDA, DL7VEE, DL4HG, YU6MM, YO2DFA, HA7PL, LA5YJ, several LZ's and A45XR, Chris in Oman that managed to catch me in the QSB: a QRB of 5000 Km with 10 watt and a very basic antenna, WOW! Looks like this old piece of junk is still working great! I hope to meet you soon on the magic band!
PLEASE NOTE: I have been using Global QSL service for all my bureau QSL's for the past few months.
Please drop me an E-mail if you receive one. Thank you!
73 de Piero, IK1IYU
