Radio caught me in the early 1990s, sweeping through whatever an old Radio Shack scanner could hear. Public-safety channels, local conversations, paging, and the analog cellular systems of the era made the air feel full of invisible machinery.
Those early cellular voice channels really were ordinary analog FM divided among frequency pairs, so a suitable scanner picked them up. Working out how all of it functioned led, fairly quickly, to wanting to transmit as well.
Getting licensed
I read the study books, combined them with the electronics I already knew, and became licensed around 1997. The exact date is less clear than I would like, because the Canadian qualification and privilege system changed around those years.
I earned the Advanced qualification around 2006 or 2007. My primary callsign is VE6SLP, which resembles “slepp” closely enough that I have never wanted a different one.
Around 2012 I added VA6GA, a two-letter callsign chosen as an homage to Geeks Anonymous. It belongs to my automated radio projects rather than to the original school group.
First radio
A Radio Shack HTX-202 handheld VHF transceiver. It was stolen in the mid-2000s, and I eventually replaced it with another of the same model, which I still have.
The HTX-202 spent time wired into my early cars and has served in field operations since. Most of my first contacts were local VHF conversations; the individual calls blur together after several decades, but I still know people I first met on the air back then.
Mobile operation became a regular part of long drives around Edmonton-area cities in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Local ragchewing made the time pass and turned the repeater coverage map into something I understood from experience rather than from a list.
APRS, packet, and repeaters
APRS is where radio, networking, mapping, and public infrastructure overlap.
I run an APRS iGate and have operated a Winlink station. The VE6NAS BPQ packet BBS is still online, and I operate the VE6PAW 147.180+ repeater in the Edmonton area on behalf of the original operator’s family.
For a time I also ran the Alberta APRS Hog, which recorded local over-the-air APRS activity and turned it into a website showing traffic patterns. The monitor has been offline for years. While it ran, it was a good way to find weak parts of the network and see how digipeater distance and placement affected coverage.
Contesting
The two I return to are the RAC Canada Day Contest and the RAC Winter Contest, both run by Radio Amateurs of Canada. I’ve entered for a number of years and have gradually taken them more seriously, though the main pleasure is still working stations across the country.
I’ve entered other contests. The Canadian events feel less like collecting arbitrary multipliers and more like hearing the whole country come alive at once.
Contacts and stories
After earning the Advanced qualification and putting up a new HF antenna, the first station I worked was in Slovenia, a great deal farther than I expected a first contact to reach. I’ve since worked more than ninety countries.
I’ve also volunteered radio operations for public events such as runs and park activities, where the hobby becomes part of somebody else’s communications plan. I’ve always thought of amateur radio as a personal hobby and a public service at the same time.
What has changed most over the years is what I listen for. Early on it was equipment and technique. Now it is mostly people. I’ve heard first-hand accounts from several Second World War veterans, and I still hear operators talk about their work, families, and lives, sometimes in a direct conversation and sometimes while I am only listening. The voices blur; the moments do not.
Current station
The main HF radio is a FlexRadio 6400, usually connected to a Butternut HF9V or a G5RV when Alberta weather has not taken the latter down again. Other antennas cover VHF, APRS, and whatever experiment is running.
Two of my software-defined radios are on the web:
- sdr.ve6slp.ca
- kiwisdr.ve6slp.ca, hosted at VE6JY’s large station near Lamont
My public logs are linked from ve6slp.ca, including Wavelog, QRZ, and the other services I synchronize contacts to. Since rebuilding the logging setup I have been trying to make at least one QSO a day.
What is next
Lately I have been returning to satellite work and building an HF digital mode of my own. Getting it working matters, but the mathematics, tradeoffs, and failure modes are the part I actually want, and those disappear when the mode is only a menu option in someone else’s software.