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 Born Gore, Southland,
NZ, 20 November 1962 and educated to University
Entrance level in Christchurch, I was
introduced to radios, as many were, by way of a
crystal set for my 12th birthday and by the time I
left home had progressed to restoring several dozen
domestic valve mantle sets. I was also an avid shortwave DXer from the late 70's to mid 80's.
In 1979 I initially wished for careers in the Air
Force first as a Pilot (too young) and then Avionics
Technician (too dumb!). But after dismally failing
algebra entry exams, and desperate to leave home to
gain my independence, I ducked across to the next
defence careers door, the Army and somehow fluked
their entry exams. At this stage I was quite unaware
that joining a defence force was a sure way of
losing what little independence I had!. <drum roll please>
Suddenly, in
Jan 1980, I was enrolled in the Army's Regular Force
Cadet School at the tender
age of 17 and a year later commenced a trade as a
Radio & Electronics Engineer with the Royal New
Zealand Electrical Mechanical Engineers (RNZEME). This was a
lengthy 9,500hr
apprenticeship ending with trade certificate at NZCE
levels. I spent the next 4
years servicing mainly HF and VHF
comms equipment for military and commercial sectors
including many valve and valve/solid state hybrid
equipments, the former I have never lost my passion
for. During this time I did as many defence
sponsored engineering courses as I possibly could,
welding, machining, metal working etc, all skills
that would later stand me in good steed for my mechanical fabrication & machining
interests on classic cars and motorcycles later in
life. <fast forward>
I
successfully completed my
Electronics & Electrical qualifications in late 1983 and
after completing the apprenticeship received my
'civilian' Radio Electronics Serviceman and
Electrical Registration tickets in 1985.
Soon after I was
promoted to the dizzying heights of Sergeant and
rewarded with a very memorable trip to the UK with the
British Royal Marines and the SBS (Special Boat
Squadron) to install and monitor Satellite
Navigation and Radar communications equipment in
their RHIB's (Rigged Hull Inflatable Boats)- 28
footers
with 2x240hp V6 outboard's.
 In 1984 my career path started veering
away from radio and electronics and more to computers after a year or so
earlier learning to use and repair ex US circa
Vietnam 105mm howitzer field artillery calculators.
Incidentally the ENIAC was built for this purpose,
some 20 years earlier. NZ Def Forces got a lot of
US hand-me-downs!.
Known as FACE (Field Artillery Computer Equipment)
these were the size of a large diesel generator
mounted on a trailer. <I could tell you more
but then Id have to kill you!>.
As if the workload
wasn't enough in between
all this I also completed several advanced
microprocessor design and servicing courses at Waikato
Technical Institute and Medical
electronics (servicing MRI's and the likes) at Wellington Hospital. Since then I have been
actively involved with computers in one form or
another owning various early
computers including Clive Sinclair's ZX80's and
81's, ZX Spectrum. Microbee, an Aussie made kitset
about A$399 in 1982 with 32k RAM, 16k ROM basic,
cassette etc and progressing to a Sanyo if800 CPM (in- built printer
and CGA screen, two, yes two! single sided 180K
floppy disk drives). In Singapore in 1985 I bought my first IBM compatible
PC/XT. A Lingo, one of the first successful PC
clones, a then very respectable 20Mb hd, CGA screen,
512k memory, 8Mhz 8088 (later upgraded to a 10Mhz
NEC V20!), Epson FX80 printer all costing over
$10,000!. Later I used my computer skills for income
but always kept my hand in my primary trade for
pleasure. Becoming a ham operator, ZL2TAE, in 1985
(I think) also kept the radio passion alive.
I
started programming sometime in 1984-85 with
Microsoft Fortran-80 and Cobol developing what we
techs called ATE or Automated Test Equipment,
cutting edge stuff for mid eighties, and I'm proud
to have been a part pioneer in this IEEE based PC
controlled behemoth. The computer being a New
Zealand designed Delphi-Progeny 8080 CPM-80 PC that
had a full height 10MB hard disk and 128k memory. I
spend a good year coding and debugging many routines
for many tests to military AN/PRC field radios like
the 77 set, its predecessor the 25, the 47 (Collins
made) that are all now quite collectible. One I
remember is the 104 set, why?, apart from it
being the army's latest set, the freq synthesizer
chip was small integration, like early SMD (as
opposed to Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)).
This (soldered) chip was very prone to failure, as a
result we cut the top off many and looked under a
magnifying glass, it was the most beautiful thing,
like looking down on a city at dusk from space.. <hey
wake-up!>
During the mid eighties to early nineties I
run and developed bulletin board systems, my
own subscription based ones which grew into 4
dedicated lines with then top of the line 9600 baud
modems servicing 16 online cdroms and 8 full
height 40MB hard disks fed from a scsi backbone
(Remember this was pre 1990!). These were named 'No
Bauds Barred', 'Feeling Baud' and 'Peripheral
Vision'. On the later I developed one of the first
online shopping systems, and one of the first
credit card validation programs using bank
algorithms in Pascal. As a result I consider myself an
electronic commerce
pioneer of sorts.
Finding programming
agreed with me, or more like vice versa, I also developed many dBase II (CPM),
III and IV (DOS & Windows) applications, some
very large, while with
Defence, several of which I understand were still in
use some 10 years after I left. I still
remember some of the acronyms, CAPP for computer
aided production planning for instance, but that was
the largest.
Data logging was another favorite of mine, this was
leading edge stuff then too and we wrote all our own
software and designed all our own sensors. I was
responsible for the installation and monitoring of
them while the motor pool tried to convert the LAV's
(Light Armored Vehicles) to try and run on a
Mercedes Diesel engine (I think). <applaud here>.
After introducing and managing a very large Banyan
Vines WAN, being trained as a Prime systems engineer
and attending dozens of PC courses at various
technical institutes and seminars including IBM,
Compaq and Epson specific technical education, I
left the army in Jan 1991. I was then employed as a
Technical Manager, servicing PC's, monitors and
printers, until two years later, in March 1993, I
left and established my own PC business Teleware
Distributors Limited and several offshoots which I'm much less actively involved now
concentrating mostly on the I.T contracting work I
do, and I have done, for the
Parliamentary Counsel Office over the past
15 odd years <fast
forward..>
In
the new millennium I made a decision to return to my roots and
once again pursue my first passion, radio and
electronics.
My main interests are the tube comms and ham
receivers, simple reflex (regen) tube receivers, unique and vintage test equip but
especially the signal generators that are also true
TRF receivers like RCA or Riders Chanalyst's,
Meisseners Analyst and Supremes Audolyzer and others
Ill share with you later. I also enjoy vintage
stereo equipment and valve amps of all descriptions
and am quickly becoming a leak geek and quad mod.
 When Im not in the shack or in front of my Myford
lathe turning something, I also like to play with my
Icom IC-R9000 chasing HF Fax, RTTY, WeFax from
GeoSats and NOAA orbiting weather satellites. A
Timewave 599/zx digital signal processor plays a big
part here. I DX a
little in the MW and tropical bands and have a
choice of 5 antennas at my disposal including a Grahn MS3 indoor active loop, Dx One Pro Mark II
outdoor active loop antenna (RF Systems) and various VHF
dipoles and UHF discones for broadband work. I am
wanting to tinker with FTA Satellites and SSTV also. The
R9000 is controlled with a large variety of software
including
Ham Radio Deluxe
and homebrew. The 9000 is more or less
immune to the digital hash from the PC near it
due to its tempest like design and heavy shielding
that hides itself from its own CRT!. <hey, get that rope
off your neck and move away from the balcony please
sir>
This site then, is a reflection of that
return to my trade in strictly a hobby sense
(despite my websites attempt to tell you otherwise!)
that I take up
along with my other passions like
indian
motorcycles and fishing.
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