Sobre mí

Introducción: El Español es mi lengua materna. Sin embargo, por motivos profesionales, durante muchos años he escrito mucho más en inglés que en Español. Por ello, y dependiendo del impulso del momento, el contenido puede estar escrito en cualquiera de los dos idiomas.

Foreword: Spanish is my mother tongue. However, for professional reasons, during many years I wrote much more text in English than in Spanish. So this site has mixed contents. Depending on my mood at the time of writing, text may be in Spanish or in English.

Since I can remember, I wanted to be “Engineer of Things Electronic”. Or better, Radio Engineer. At the age of 15, I became a radio technician, while at secondary school. Then I went to the University. But things not always develop as you plan. I ended starting Mining Engineering.

In parallel, I started a CB activity, building my own rigs, up to a “100 W” valve linear amplifier. We lived in a paired house, and installing an antenna in the roof was not too difficult. Just a 2.75 m brass rod with wire radials.

By 1983 I got a “Ingeniero Superior de Minas” degree. Something equivalent to a Master’s degree in Engineering. I started working for a startup Independent Technical Research Organization (ITRO)…. 450 Km from my birthplace. I started living in condominiums, and radio operation or building was out of the question.

I worked in technical research for the rest of my career. I started designing and programming embedded systems for use in hazardous areas. I went up in the ranks, doing more and more managerial work, until the ITRO went out of business.

There were symptoms, of course. When it was clear that the situation only could worsen, I decided to finish a PhD thesis started years ago. I got a Doctorate in Engineering by 2015. When the ITRO was shut down, I moved to an University, then to another, in “Senior Fellow Researcher” positions. Until I was able to claim a retirement pension in 2021.

Life in the University was, ….. well,… more relaxed than in a private company. I had time to retake radio activity, passed my HAREC examination in 2018, and got EA4HCN callsign immediately.

I have not a permanent station at home (IN80 Maidenhead Square). Just a tabletop setup.

In HF I operate with improvised, self-constructed, antennas. Balcony and loop antennas. IN V/UHF, a pair of whips (of the type used for mobile operation) with a magnetic mount is sufficient.

Currently I operate exclusively in digital modes, using either FTDX10 or FT-710 rigs. FT8 was a discovering. It fitted perfectly my interests and circumstances. Making things was always my primary interest, more than operation. Operation is just a mean for testing my builds. FT8 allowed me to test them. And PSK reporter provided the feedback that I needed.

Since 1996, we move in July to a summer QTH at IN52.

The house has a nice garden that allows experimenting with improvised antennas. But, to not upsetting my lovely XYL, they must be easy and quickly installed and disassembled. After many tests, I ended using a vertical one. The radiator was built with 5 sections of 1 m aluminium tubing, mounted on a photographer’s tripod. 3 x 10 m counterpoise (radials) completed the setup.

For 40 m operation, an sliding coil, with a design based in Yaesu’s ATAS-25, is used to tune the antenna. For 20 & 30 m operation, the sliding coil is adjusted to 0 turns, and FT-710 autotuner do the rest.

For 20 to 6 m operation, the radiator is shortened to 3 m by removing the two uppermost sections. With the sliding coil in place, adjusted to 0 turns, and a 7.5 m RG58 coaxial, the autotuner in my FT-710 rig can find a tuning solution for all bands in that range (20 m, 17 m, 15 m, 12 m, 10 m and 6 m)! Who could ask for more?