Currently living in Montréal (VE2) -- only on air as OZ7AM occasionally via internet links. QSL'ing is stand-by for 6 months -- till June 5 th 2012.

Sorry! de VE2OXA/OZ7AM

Hi there, thanks for looking me up! I’m Alex, a.k.a. OZ7AM, born August 21^st 1989, ‘ham’ since 2004.

The pictue up in the corner shows my Lovely wife Lynsey and I, Montréal, October 2011.

You might have worked me as: VE2OXA, VK2/OZ7AM, 6Y7AM, JW/OZ7AM, F/OZ7AM, DL/OZ7AM, LX/OZ7AM, OY/OZ7AM, OZ7AM/P, S5/OZ7AM, or KC1XX, VK9HR, 5P8Y, 6Y1V, OZ1HQ, OZ5E, OZ5EDR, OZ7A(/P), OZ7AMG(/P), OZ7RJ/P, OZ7DDS/J, OZ9DDS/J, OZ9WSR/J.

About QSL;

If you chose to QSL direct, please send a self-addressed envelope, an SAE, along with your card. Green Stamps or IRCs are preferred, but I do not consider missing return postage as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, all direct sent cards are answered “via direct”, except DX-pedition QSOs! I'm not Richie Rich.

The short story:

I love contest and DX, QRV mostly on CW, but also do SSB andsome RTTY/PSK31. I like to build equipment myself, primarily antennas and amplifiers, this is both cheaper in most cases, and you might learn something in the process. DX-peditions, both to work them and to be on them! I’d love to go to some exotic pacific island for two weeks, to sit on top of piles of crab-crap for 14 days just working pile-ups!

Beside amateur radio, I study at DTU (Technical University of Denmark www.dtu.dk), hope to become an engineer one day – believe me, having world’s most wonderful hobby and the most interesting study at the same time isn’t easy!

The long story:

I give amateur radio credit for my ‘success’ in life so far. When I was around 12, I discovered ham radio almost accidently, by seeing a few vey tall towers being erected on the beach, which is only a few hundred meters from where I live. I’ve always been of a curious nature, so I cycled over to find out what it was.

I don’t think I’m the first person to discover ham radio by tipping over a Field Day team, but that was what I did. Already being interested in everything radio-like, I understood that this was something I just couldn’t ignore. The man who later became my elmer, OZ5LH, Jørgen (Joergen), made it clear to me that ham radio was the thing for me, so that following winter I began takeing classes in the local radio club, both radio theory and CW lessons. The latter was a fight for me, I did see the advantages of CW, but it didn’t come to me with ease. I admit that I wasn’t too industrious, and when the Danish counterpart to the FCC, the ITST, dropped the code exam I did too.

I passed in June 2004, with an “A-category”, similar to “Extra”, and happy I was.

My first QSO was with M0MJA, a mind blowing experience. It was on 20m phone and I remember the whole family gathered in my room to witness this great step for mankind. Radio has always been a part of my father’s life, even though he has no license and doesn’t know much about radio he was a radio operator in the police for many yeas. My grandfather, who I unfortunately never got to know because he passed away in 1975, was a telegraph officer. He worked for “Dansk Radio” in many years installing communication equipment aboard ships. He knew code, and sailed the seas those days where CW was the only way of communicating with anyone ashore. It was with him and his life in mind when I took up code later on.

I had my first 500 QSO’s almost using PSK31 entirely, a god way to start if you don’t know CW, or if you’re just half as microphone shy as I was… Some people claim that PSK is the computer working other computers, and it is, but there is a tendency among more experienced operators of looking down on PSK’ers. Should my reader be one of these then please remember that someone has to turn the computer on, someone has to put up antennas and someone has to figure out how to make it all work. I’m my opinion there is no difference between the CW/phone operator and the PSK/digimode operator, it’s just different ways of communicating.

Sooner or later I did get a bit tired of digimode and wanted to move on. I began working DX, or rather, I began listening to DX. I did hundreds of hours of listening. I learned about a thing called ‘split operation’ and ‘pile-up’, and soon the DX decease hit me. I started answering CQ’s and I slowly got confident with the way of having a rubber stamp QSO.

At that time I only had 70 – 90 watts, some bands even less, and my radio was an FT101ZD which I still own. It’s a nice rig, but it suffers one great disadvantage; it can’t work split.

I decided to go large and buy an FT1000MP – after two years of dishwashing at the local restaurant, and the doors to a new world opened! It was about that time I started practicing code again. I was tempted by all the DX I knew were on CW, and my limited antennas, a delta-loop for 20-meters, later upgraded to a low tribander.

OZ5LH and I met almost every evening on 28 250 for CW training and I had my first CW QSO two months later. It was at this point I really considered myself a “real ham”, when I was able to copy and send morse code. I believe that my grandfather would have been proud if he had still been here.

Contests – you gotta love them!

I started to participate in contests because they could give me a lot of new countries, something that now is one of my passions. I did my first CQWW in 2005. It was really a brilliant experience, and I knew I wanted to do it again. Now I know that most hams can be divided into groups; those who love contesting and those who hate it. I need to point something out about this. I do understand those who doesn’t like contesting, and all the “You’re 59, what’s the call and the number again please?!” type of QSOs.

I don’t want to force people to like contest or contesters but some hams really spend too much energy on hating contests. This is a major part of our hobby and one of the reasons that we are still here! Consider the following; listening to a band like 15 meters in a non-contest weekend, you might hear 10 or 20 stations on the band if you’re very lucky. Question; why so few? Answer; because most hams are too lazy to get on and call CQ! Then, in a contest weekend you tune 15 again, this time you can detect over 100 different stations. Question; why so many? Answer; because during contests-weekends is the only time where we actually use the full spectrum. If there were no contests, we could probably reduce most bands to 50 kHz without the need for more space. Conclusion; without contesting, there would be much less activity, and with much less activity we loose the right to our bands. Is this a bit harsh? Probably, yes. But I none the less believe there is some truth in it.

I admit that the above is a postulate and here comes another one; those hams that dislike contests are often those who rarely call CQ or get on the bands in general. I’m a keen DX’er, trying to work everything anywhere, and in that sense I see the frustration when there is a contest going on at the same time as an expedition, but that’s where the WARC-bands come in! Now many countries have approved 60-meters too, which gives a total of four non-contest bands. Do not tell me that these bands are all closed, they may sound so, but that’s just because people don’t dare a CQ.

The punch line; don’t complain about the contest activity on the bands, use the opportunity to get a new one on the WARC’s or cry out a CQ; you might get a surprise!

Latest years

Now I’m studying for engineer at DTU, Technical University of Denmark; http://www.dtu.dk/English.aspx . Believe me, to have the world’s best hobby and following most interesting education isn’t easy! I do whatever I can to make everything fit in and that’s quite a task.

My main interest in the hobby is antennas, what they do, how the do it and why they do it. This means that I need to learn about advanced electromagnetics theory, implicitly higher mathematics, which is something that sometimes is about to drive me insane. Pay respect to every EM engineer! To achieve knowledge of the laws that governs electromagnetic phenomena is probably one of the most difficult subjects of all electronics theory.

When not studying I try to get new countries in the log at every given time. I love contesting and participate as my time allows, mostly at OZ5E or OZ7A. Look up www.oz5e.com and www.copenhagencontestclub.com respectively. Some people may already know OZ5E from the Ham Band http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAOOd48j6WA , a station in Jutland maintained by OZ1XJ and OZ1ADL, which is probably the best contest QTH in OZ-land. I’ve worked many contests from there, enjoying Andrew and Jan’s hospitality. They have done a lot for amateur radio in Denmark!

DX-peditions

- another aspect of amateur radio I love. I’ve been of a few so far, first it wasn’t really expeditions but vacations with a radio in the suitcase. I enjoyed learning about propagation while vacationing in France, Germany, Luxembourg and other European countries. But none of these were or are very rare, so the feeling of handing out a new one wasn’t really there.

In 2009 the 6Y1V team announced their young ham competition, and I still can’t believe that I actually won. EA3ALZ, Roger, RV9LM, Alex, and I were selected to go with KY1V to the 6Y1V contest station on Jamaica for the CQ WW CW Contest 2009. This has been the absolute peak of my ham radio ‘career’ so far. I owe great thanks to KY1V David, and K1LZ Krassy, but also 3ALZ, 9LM and UU4JMG for their great company and friendship! This experience made it clear to me that I had to go on more expeditions, and few months later I found myself visiting my friend Thomas OZ1AA/OY3AA on the Faroe Islands for the CQ 160 CW contest 2010. Another fabulous trip, thanks to all the guys on OY6A for letting us use the station for the contest.

Later in 2010 OZ1IKY, OZ1AA and I went to Svalbard to do the RGSB IOTA Contest from the station JW5E in Longyearbyen. www.jw5e.com yet another fantastic trip, still not a rare one, but pileups’ on 10 MHz were big and enjoyable.

My non-amateur radio interests

Ham radio takes much of my time, but not all. I like reading and do it a lot. Learning new languages is also fun. I had French three years in primary school, but without much luck. Today I’m actually better at German and my Russian is getting better and better, some says so… I’ve had my first QSO’s in Russian but it’s difficult, “Щ” is impossible… If you are Russian and call I answer your call, please have patience, HI.

73, Alex

VE2/OZ7AM -- February 21st, 2012

PS:

Sufficient postage is as of April 1^st as follows:

Roughly 2.60 US dollars. This means 3 (three) 'green stamps' for QSL via air, or one IRC
This counts for letters send to countries outside Europe. For letters to countries in Eurpe the price is DKK 11.00, which dependig on the exchange rate is about 2.10 USD. Please respect these new rates, there is nothing we can do about it.