Today I had my first-ever QSO, with a ham in Germany.
This was nearly 50 years after I first passed the UK Radio Amateurs' Exam in December 1971. Long story, but procrastination is the main reason it took me so long to get on the air.
I am posting this in the Homebrew forum because my rig is entirely homebrewed, from ARRL designs of the 1960s, and many helpful people here on eHam helped me as built these projects, mainly in a concentrated burst about seven years ago. It is that rig I am using on the air today.
That station is described in the 1968 edition of ARRL's "How to Become a Radio Amateur". The receiver is a three-transistor set with a regenerative FET detector. The transmitter is a MOPA (6C4 and 5763) with about 12 watts plate input. The antenna is a homebrewed full-size wire dipole. I am operating monoband on 40m for the moment.
My first-ever QSO was this morning, with a ham near Bremerhaven, Germany, a distance of about 590 kilometers (370 miles) from my QTH in southeast England.
Inevitably, the transmitter needs to be tweaked. A knowledgeable ham in Sweden heard a distinct "yoof" in my crystal-controlled signal this morning, and advises adjusting the trimmer capacitor that is between the grid of the oscillator tube and ground.
So it goes, in an unending cycle of building, improving, troubleshooting, building again. For me that's the fun in ham radio, but actually operating makes it all worthwhile!
73 de Martin, G3EDM