Hello all from Cockatoo, Melbourne, Australia, which is small country town, about 50 km due east of Melbourne City and in this area we have many small farms and people who love horses and a famous tourist steam train which comes through our town, called Puff-n-Billy.

I have many tall gum trees on my property, some about 120 feet (35 metres) high on our block and so I have many wire antennas, as I do not have much clear space for a rotary beam.

I have two 160 mtr dipoles, one broadside NE-SW and one broadside N-S, fed with open wire feeders and they are both about 100 feet (30 mtrs) high, connected to simple link coupled tuners, one tuner for each band for dipole 1 and tuner one for each band for dipole 2 (20 tuners in total), which are switchable via a relay matrix controlled by a 20 position rotary coax switch and this makes band changing easy, for such a tuned antenna/ ladder line feeder system. See photo this page.

I am mainly interested in "Low band DX'ing", contesting and I am also sometimes on Echolink.

In this town called Cockatoo, we have many Cockatoo birds (which cause some problems with our wires) and many other birds, but NO kangaroos.

In the year 2001, I spent 3 months working in Papua New Guinea and had the call sign of P29IO and a great time on the bands, about 6000 qso's, but I do not think I will ever return, as the captial city of Port Moresby is too wild and scary (dangerous), I think.

Because of my wire antenna, I spend most of my activity on 30, 40, 80 and 160 on cw and ssb.

Prior to June, 1988, my call was VK3BEE.

Since 2005, I have spent many months in the P.R. of China (going for one or two months per trip and so more than 26 months in total) and have made many new freinds in many different cities there and have found the Amateur Radio hobby is growing fast there. So if you don't hear me on the bands, then it is probably because I am away again in China.

Hope to catch you on 160.This biography was updated on January 23, 2011.

73's Ron