In September 1965 we had the oppertunity to go to our radio ham examination. By wonder, we passed from the first atempt. We started to build our first transmitter, while we waiting the arival of the official papers. The regulation in those days was, the first year of your licence you were only allowed to go on the air in CW. For the phone portion of the licence we had to wait 12 months and pass a second examination ( this has quite changed this days). The first transmitter was a very simple one, a comercial part, concisted of a vfo Geloso and for the final we used the popular 807 tube. Reception took place trough a Star comercial ham-reciever from myn swl-period, living on an apartment in town, we had only a short indoor dipole to start our radio transmitting live.. When nearly two months after our succesful exams the papers arrived, we were also ready with our home made transmitter to go on the air with our new ON5KL callsign. My first qso was with my good friend ON5FC, Jos, on 20 meter, it happened the same evening I received my licence, this was on October 31 of 1965. The next two years we were able to make a lots of qso's and inproving also our cw knowledge. After some time we started to receive the first qsl cards, mostly via bureau. With all the qsl cards on hand we became interested in award collecting. My first club was of course our national UBA, the following was the Diploma Intresse Group ( DIG) from Germany, in the years passed by, the station and antennas changed a few times, after I obtained my phone licence, I had the luck to meet Pam, ON4QP who became my XYL. We bought one of the first SSB tranceivers available in Belgium, a FT100 from Sommerkamp (Yeasu). In trying to produce stronger signals the arial changed from a vertical over a multiband dipole to a home brew cubical quad. We changed a couple of times from qth, which gave us also the opportunity to set-up some new antennas on higher towers. With a new TS510 we started our Kenwood series of tranceivers.

Because we were very often active on the bands, we had the oppertunity to collect a lot of qsl's and that produced also a lot of awards from all over the world.

When we moved to our actual home in the spring of 1972, the decision was made to put up some yagi antenna, in the hope to have less repair work than with the wires on a quad antenna.The antenna, was a Wilson DB43 interlaced beam, 4 el 20m and 3 el 15m on the same 9m boom, the antenna was put up on our 16m. high old square tower, rotor was a Ham4. The antenna was fed with two 20 m long pieces of RG213 coax cable. The shack is on the first floor, close to the mast. We purchased also a second tranceiver, TS830s from kenwood.

In the Autum of 1974 we had bad luck, we lost our tower during a severe storm, one of the guywires broke, the tower top twisted and collapsed, but there was no damage done to the antenna. Due to the circumstances we focused our main activities on working over the new amateur satelites, Oscar 6 and Occar 7 for the next two years. The satellite communications were very nice, but because of the short time the satellites were available for communications,and there are always nearly the same stations we worked, we decided to go back to HF and put up our yagi again.The tower should be free-standing, (no more guywires) and around 24 m high, to have the height for a sloper system for 40m.

Searching around produced us a very nice 24m high second hand free-standing tower. 14 days after that we ended the necessary ground work, making a hole in the ground from two by two by two meter long and deep and filled it up with concrete. We ordered the derrick-car to put up the tower. In five hour of time, we assembled the four 6 m long pieces together on the ground, putting the tower up in one piece with the help of the derrick-car, and fixed the tower to the concrete. We assembled the 7el DB43 from Wilson again and put the antenna on the tower at 24m height, three meter higher we fixed a 5 el monoband 10m yagi from Hygain,on top we put a 2m vertical. All was rotated with a Create RC5A rotor. After installing a sloper for 40m and an inverded V dipole for 80m the station was operational again.

My intinal DXCC diploma originates from 15 September 1969 with #10748 as number, we updated nearly each year our score and by the day in 1974, when we lost our antenna, we had obtained our 300 country sticker. While waiting the dx-pedition to upgrade our score, we worked also for the others awards, well know as ( WAS, WAZ etc..). My final country after 30 year of dx-ing was Myramar (Birma). Now it was time to ask for the DXCC honour roll plaque NR 1. Till today we were suscessfull in working all the new created countries as well. Initially the DXCC award was my focus of attention but the closer I got to the honour roll, the more time I spent looking for other challanges. Been attracted by the country of Ireland and after seeing so many islands there lying around, it was obvious that we also started with the IOTA " Island on the Air ( IOTA)" program. We jumped nearly in every newly island award, started in countries with a lot of islands. So we are very busy in DIE, DIEI, DIP, IIA, CIA as most inportant targets, we tried to work so many different islands we could, also from other Countries. The focus is more on awards that have a plaque or shield instead of a paper award, mostly because of the available space to put them on the wall hi.
Mainwhile we had changed our TS830S for a newer TS940S tranceiver.

While traveling at night on sea, it is always facinating to see sudently appear the flashing light of a lighthouse in the dark, guiding the ships in save waters.That sight and also the different lighthouses we saw on visting different islands, gave us also the will to start collecting qsl cards ( photo's also) from stations active from Lighthouse around the world, for the different awards.

I n June 1995 we replaced the more than 25 year old tower with a newer, stronger one. The antenna set-up changed also, on 27 meter height we set a AW3S from Cruscraft, 3 el for 12 and 17 m with the 30 m dipole extension. So we started to be active on the 'WARC' bands and the excitement to work new countries was coming back once again. For 10, 15, 20 meter we put on 24 meter height a hygain TH6DXX. After many years of trulley service we had some minor trouble with the TS940, he deserved a retirement. We were able the purchase a good TS850S tranceiver

With the perspective of pre-pension we purchased a Kenwood TS870S tranceiver mainly for digital modes and together with all this new set-up, we hope to enjoy ham radio for a very long time.

As the world is always moving so our radiolive was moving to. On one of a storming winternights a few year back we looze our AW3S antenne (broken boom), next summer we were able to replace the WARC antenne with a much stronger mosley TW33XL 3 el yagi for 30,17,12 meter. At the same time we fixed a 5/8 duo band vertical for 2 meter and 70cm on top of the tower. 2 meter was for local ragchuwing and the 70cm to acces the dx-cluster.

To celebrathing my officiel pension in 2005 we purchased a TS2000S tranceiver. During winter time I converted my old monoband 10 meter yagi beam with the help from ON6DK ( modelling the antenna ) to a 5 el 6m yagi on a 7m boom. Not knowing must about 6 meter in May 2006 we putting the antenne together on the flat roof of our house and fixed it at the tower on so what 7 meter hight to do testing. With the help of a MFJ analyser we are able to ajust the antenne very well. After connected the coaxcable and the tranceiver, we had all the luck finding there was a opening direction Spain and Portugal and this was the direction the antenna pointing to. Our first contact on 6 meter are from 17 may 2006 and that day we worked nearly 60 station. Due to the fix direction we missed a lot of the other directions so we had to put the antenne on the tower. We fixed the 6 meter Yagi between the TH6DXX and the TW33cl at 25 meter and al seems to work pretty well, have 84 countries work so far on 6 meter with only the TS2000S at 100 watt.

Next project we are working on is to bring the rotor down to the bottom of the tower, So in case of rotor defect we can still turn the antenne by hand (we are not becoming younger to climb a tower during storming nights ). See You on one of the amateur bands.

Copyright 2006 ON5KL & ON4QP.All rights reserved.