Isle of Avalon Amateur Radio Club Webmaster G7LEE

I was Isle of Avalon Amateur Radio Club secretary until the the 2026 AGM on the 28th August, and instigated the club Website in 2019. I moved away from Somerset for family reasons but I continue to run the website and occasionally contact the Club by radio. I authored a few technical articles here over the years.

I took the RAE in 1978, apparently at the same sitting as Club founder member, now SK Martin G5FM, who lived on the Isle of Skye at the time and came down to London on the train to take the RAE at the City and Guilds exam centre near the University of London Senate House.

I was far too poor as a teenager to do anything with the ticket, I took the RAE to big up my UCAS application to Imperial College. I was applied for my amateur radio ticket in 1992 using that RAE when I was working in Suffolk, now that I could afford some radio gear. It was expensive by modern standards, a beaten up secondhand FT290 and a five crystal TAIT rig used for 2m packet and four simplex channels. I had the crystals made by IQD in Crewkerne Somerset, it was a pleasant blast from the past when I passed their workshop in Crewkerne. I’ve still got the crystals though the Tait rig is no more, getting crystals made meant saving up in the 1990s. Eventually this was joined by a Kenwood TH-D7 for packet, I had to feed the serial NMEA data from a GPS handheld into it to get APRS to show position.

You’d use a cheap secondhand mobile rig these days or a Baofeng at a push, radios, particularly VHF/UHF handhelds have become a lot cheaper in real terms since the 1990s.

I enjoyed many years with IoAARC, the guys changed me from a fellow who only really used packet and a keyboard back in the day to using the microphone and activating SOTA summits. 40 years after passing the RAE and a quarter-century after getting my amateur radio licence. So thanks to Matt, Steve Chaz, Martin and others for turning theory into practice, and sharing the occasional few beers in the evenings.