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Welcome here, OM ! This is a
short story of my ham life... Born in 1938 and radio enthusiast since 1949, I have been active since 1964 from the top of a hill close to Florence, my wonderful town... My call was then I1CLC and my station was mainly composed of a Drake 2B receiver, a Geloso G225/226 100 Watts transmitter, a Mosley TA36 6 elements Yagi beam, some homemade dipoles and minor gears. My first interest was mainly represented by the "new" SSB trasmission mode, in which I acquired soon WAZ, DXCC and a very hard WAS. In 1966 I began my activity also in VHF, in CW and RTTY who was beginning to sound steady in the HF frequencies, operated with a 1937's Teletype TG7/B, a Siemens WWII tape reader and a thoroid converter homebrew by Giuliano I1ZIE (now I5ZIE, operating also as IA5ZIE). |
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In the same year occurred the terrible flood of the
Arno river and on November 4, at 6.00 GMT my station became the first node
of the emergency network. Immediately created from amateur radio community,
for many days it was the only communication system avalaible for the town
and for almost a month it was active and useful in helping the authorities...
The memory looks back to some other ham friends involved in the network as Luciano I1ORS, Mario I1ROD, Umberto I1ZIZ, Roberto I1RUI, Piero I1TDJ, Valerio I1AVB, Orlando I1LAO, Giorgio I1TFF and many more, some of them now Silent Keys. A short Italian memory of these days and the images are available at www.ciapetti.it/i5clc/alluvione . The emergency was mainly supported in HF but showed a necessity to improve our capabilities in VHF and in the following years my main interest switched to the new FM mode for VHF, including the repeaters operation: it seems now hard to believe, but the contribution offered from Standard equipments (such SR 816) with the use of surplus modified cavities made it possible in a few years of... mountains climbing ! Approaching a new RTTY circuitry, in the 1970's summer - at the sound of Celentano's "Azzurro" and Tom Jones's "Delilah" - I improved my RTTY with the construction of a Mainline TTL2 unit, derived from 73 Magazine. |
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At the end of 70's - moved
the station in a country house in the Mugello Valley, 40 km from Florence -
my HF and RTTY activity became occasional, almost limited to some Contests,
and I operated mainly in VHF mobile, beginning the approach at the new VHF
and UHF Packet mode, under the TAPR directions. Since the beginning of 90's,
the work's occurrences and a storm (that caused an "antenna's cocktail") let
me very few equipments and time to work on the air.... Now several, years after - as you can se... - and back in Florence, altough in a little apartment at the 7th floor of a condominium, the spleen of the magnificent amateur radio world had been so strong to move my steps to continue, maybe in QRP, the long, long way I have back... The equipment ? I get back from the country house - now almost a museum - an ICOM 751 transceiver bought in 1982, a Kenwood AT230 antenna tuner bought in 1986, some homebrew gears... "And antenna ?" you could say... Don't smile, please ! Waiting for a reasonable solution, my antenna is now representend by a 25 meters roll of 1.5 mm plastic covered wire - yellow and green, that one used in the houses for the ground connection... - that I unroll silently down the window in the deep of the night, when the condominium TV are off !!! Don't tell to the policemen, OM ! |
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Thinking almost difficult to have a QSO with me with such a gear, you are
pleased to get from here my best regards ! 73 ES 51 DE CARLO I5CLC |
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I5CLC IS
AGAIN... |
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THE LINKS WILL COME IN THE FUTURE, PERHAPS...
