My HAM history...

Some events occurred in my adolescence:

"an occasional" gift, an electrical kit to understand electrical phenomenas ("Elettro BRAL"); "the occasional" acquaintance of one student attending electrotechnical school (Daniele); "the occasional" encounter of Paul, I1HJP that made me to discover the radio! The frequentation of Mr. Cornelio Pace (sk July 2002), a patient radio-technician that made to me as a detonator...

In 1980 I achieved the "special" licence (for VHF and up, now extended also to HF) of amateur radio operator with call IW1AU and immediately I applied myself to the home-made of antennas (yagi) and low noise preamplifiers for VHF and UHF bands and modifications to the radios to improve their characteristics or to make up for defects.

My HAM "apogeo" was when I achieved the satellite operation; in this activity the technical and scientific knowledges were stressed, because:

1. the antennas must have particular lobes, in order to avoid ground radioelectric noise;
   
2. the antennas must have two degrees of movement (spin and elevation) with all the relevant mechanical complications;
   
3. preamplifiers and cables must be optimized for the best noise figure;
   
4. it must have a good knowledge of celestial mechanics (terminologies, calculations of orbits, etc.);
   
5. operating practice, to recognize sentences in foreign language, distorted from several propagation phenomena (Faraday rotation i.e.!).

In my "HAM life", I have privileged more "the technical" part that "social one", even if I have been active member of the local club of Nizza Monf. (district of Asti, N.W. of Italy), giving a good contribution! Now I am living in Turin...

Now a dream remains in the drawer: to find a easy and chip system in order to make measures on the diagrams of irradiation of antennas, avoiding the usage of anecoich rooms, but having good time in campaign! (someone have been already tried some solution, but in my opinion this is still outside of the capacity of the major part of the people, that, like me, have no much money to dedicate).

Considerations

By now, all HAM have few time to dedicate to their activity; in order to avoid to become a simple radio-operators, a solution is to create "working groups", in which everyone with the own ability, bring a contribution.
This new approach still finds difficulty to enter in the consciences, being for tradition, a true amateur radio a man who makes the things by himself; however the force of the events that are running in the technological fields, should force to reflect that "the single contribution loses effectiveness" while it acquires great relief if making part of a greater project.

This is therefore, in my opition, the new challenge for the future....