The original G3EDM was Geoff Mills, who in the 1960s and onwards lived in Chelmsford in Essex. He was somewhat active in both DXing and 160m ARDF, and worked at what was the Mid Essex Technical College as a lecturer in the Electrical Engineering Department. He was a member of the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society: I knew him from the METC and CARS. He had one of the first Heathkit solid state transceivers and had a lot of trouble with PA transistors dying! I never had him as one of my lecturers at METC, very few of whom I honestly can say managed to impress me!
He was definitely a nice guy.....
Hi Peter,
I did find out a certain amount about Geoff Mills when researching the callsign. He had a very distinguished ham career. Among other things he was a passionate beekeeper and helped animate a weekly beekeeping net on Sundays, which apparently has continued since his passing.
I have included a biography of Mills on my QRZ profile page, written by his nephew, who is a ham. You can find it here:
https://www.qrz.com/db/g3edm.
BTW Martin,
Having a Full Licence means that if you make a temporary visit to the US and operate under the reciprocal licence, you have basically Extra Class privileges. That makes it worthwhile turning in the KB1WSY call sign....
It is unlikely that I would want to operate when visiting the U.S., but yes, I was aware of that interesting quirk. In a way it's not really a quirk: the RAE that I passed in 1971 was roughly equal to the U.S. Extra in difficulty (or maybe even harder!) in my opinion. I will let the U.S. licence lapse, for various reasons. It expires in February of next year, plus the grace period.
I must admit that I have been studying the RSGB exam manual for today's Full licence exam, to try to get up to date! (I may even take a mock exam to see how I fare).
As for my lifelong quest to get on the air, I really am nearly there. Yesterday I installed the telescopic pole that will be the center point of my 40m full-size dipole. Because of local planning rules (I live in the heart of a village, and my house is within an AONB) I will be raising the antenna to a sadly sub-optimal height, but what matters is just to get on the air. I am navigating the permission regime for antennas in the UK -- and will probably seek help from the RSGB volunteers who help with this kind of bureaucracy. Thus, I hope to increase the antenna height in due course, which of course is physically easy because it is a telescopic pole.
Edited to add: Perhaps you remember my Frankenstein-monster regenerative set, built entirely on a huge wooden breadboard? It uses sub-miniature valves and runs entirely on batteries. You helped me a lot with that set, which is the first thing that I've ever largely strung together at my own initiative rather than relying on off-the-shelf homebrew designs. Well, I spent today unpacking that set and putting it back together. For obvious reasons it was largely dismantled so that it would survive the transatlantic passage....
73 de Martin, G3EDM