Amateur radio

SM6RPZ is my amateur radio call sign, and has been so since June 13, 1986.

For those not familiar with amateur radio an explanation might be in order. Every amateur radio user has callsign. It consists of three parts. First comes one or two characters for the country, these are in most cases two letters, but some countries have one number, and one letter, after this comes a number, that in Sweden depicts in what area you live, and finally comes one to three letters that are personal. From time to time some special callsigns are used, celebrating different events etc, that do not follow these rules.

In my case we have SM, meaning an amateur station in Sweden, 6 means that I live on the west coast of Sweden, and RPZ is me.

For more information about prefixes, take a look at the website of Sveriges sändareamatörer, see link below.

My main interests are in electronics and antennas. I am especially interested in low noise receivers and receiving antennas for the lower amateur radio bands, i.e. the 160, 80, and 40 meter bands. So far I have not been able to put up my own antennas for these bands, the draw back of living in a city, but I have tried to save up as much material as possible to put up a good station for these bands when I finally have the place for them. At the moment I am thinking about four square arrays and beverage antennas (i.e. four phased verticals for transmitting, and perhaps receiving, and long wire antennas placed low to the ground for receiving.)

Lately I have started an interest in SDR, software defined radios. An interesting mix of my two fondest hobbies.

At the moment my shack consist of:

My locator is JO57XQ

For calculation of your locator, see http://www.sk6yh.org/calculations/

Information about the Amateur Service may be found at the ITU web site. A good start looking for information about amateur radio would be http://life.itu.int/radioclub/ars.htm

For those interested in amateur radio clubs please visit these links:

• Sveriges sändareamatörer, http://www.ssa.se/
• Amateur Radio Relay League, http://www.arrl.org/ Please visit their technical magazine QEX home page, http://www.arrl.org/qex/, one of the best technical magazines around these days.

Those are the national organizations in Sweden and the USA. My local radio club might be found at:

• Göteborgs sändareamatörer SK6AG, SK6GSA, http://sk6ag.org/

Finally. I am very interested in old radios and radio history and became a member in Radiohistoriska föreningen i Västsverige a year after they where founded. You may visit them at:

• Radiohistoriska föreningen i Västsverige, http://www.radiomuseet.se/radiome.htm

Another interesting place to visit is Grimeton radiostation. The only working Alexanderson transmitter in the world (installed in 1924.)

• The association Alexander, http://www.alexander.n.se/menysida.htm