Apart from my (recent) hobby of restoring Mini Cooper (exclusively sixties) I am Radio Amateur (callsign CT4NH) since 1977... and in this fantastic hobby I've dedicated all my time, from the very first day I should say!, to the elusive intercontinental contacts (known as 'DX') and especially to Contests. This forced that my ham station was equipped with very large antennas, to participate - with minimal success at international level - in Radio Contests, situation only possible due to the space I had, and the absence of severe restrictions for radio amateurs living (the vast majority) in cities or urban lots. Today it is virtually impossible to erect one suitable and competitive antenna in one of those apartment buildings, without being persecuted and prosecuted !
Some 30 years ago, there were already some constraints, not so severe as nowadays, and by this fact, one very young Jose Carlos Nunes (then a teenager), with callsign CT1BOH, often used my station in various Contests, always competing in telegraphy ('CW') and demonstrating exceptional skills not only in listening/decoding (most important!) as in high speed transmission. In fact his station was located at his parent's apartment - in Lisbon - and he had no possibilities to erect competitive antennas for all amateur bands.
His expertise, his various titles of World Champion in CW (Telegraphy), led other hams around the world, to invite him to participate from their stations on several Contests, which the most prestigious one is CQ World Wide Contest sponsored by the american magazine CQ Amateur Radio, and taking place every year in the last week-end (48 hours) of November. The above photo shows Jose Carlos CT1BOH operating from Madeira Island ham radio station - belonging to Madeira DX Team - and going for another World title on the top category : Single Operator All Band High Power! Just to give an idea about the
technical sophistication of these Contest stations below the description of showed lay-out (operating with 2 radios simultaneously), as proof that the Ham radio operator should not only have the skills to transmit and receive/decode at speeds reaching 50 to 55 wpm (words per minute) but also to have a complete control of all the paraphernalia of equipments and antennas ! Well done Jose Carlos !
1- Linear / radio1 (manual tuning)
2- Stack match to select beverage to EU, Beverage to USA or both at the same time.
3- Radio 1 (mostly on RUN)
4 - Band Pass Filter to radio 1
5 - Band decoder for automatic antenna switching and logger for radio1
6 - Band display ( from 2khz to 200khz). Mostly Radio 2 (Search&Pounce > S&P)
7 - Radio 2 (mostly S&P for multipliers)
8 - Band pass Filter for radio2
9 - Band decoder for automatic antenna switching and logger for radio2
10 - Logger Win-test SO2R (Single Operator 2 radio) advanced mode
11- 13 coax cables to antennas (2*10, 2*15, 2*20, 2*40, 2*80, 1*160, 2*beverages)
12 - Stack match for antennas 80 m band - EU, USA ou EU+USA
13 - Stack match for antennas 40 m band - EU, USA ou EU+USA
14 - Stack match for antennas 20 m band - EU, USA ou EU+USA
15 - Stack match for antennas 15 m band - EU, USA ou EU+USA
16 - Stack match for antennas 10 m band - EU, USA ou EU+USA
17 - Extreme Isolation headphone inhibiting external noise (linears)
18 - Not visible - Linear to radio2 (automatic)
Awesome!
