NL997 Introduction
Hello dear visitor,
let me introduce myself to you in some brief words....
My name is Jan Mandos, and I am born on 19 september 1949 in the village of Boxtel, in the South of The Netherlands. Now I live in the small Frysian city of Wolvega, that is situated on the map about 125 km North of Amsterdam in the countryside. I am married to Germa, who is Canadian of birth, and we have 5 children, of which 2 are South/Korean of origin, but became a member of our family shortly after they were born. We have six cats as well as six computers, so we never get bored..... We all have a lot of hobbies. My main hobby is my family, and my next important hobby became more a kind of a lifestyle.......... radio amateurism. I am a registerd amateur radio swl, and practise all different sides of this hobby. It goes from listening to radio communications to decoding digital signals to building my own apparature and antennes and all that kind of stuff.
Below you can read how I became so involved in durfin´the short waves...........
I hope you will enjoy surfing my website !
Jan.
Here is the logo of the radio amateur organisation of which I am a member
40 YEARS OF NL997 (The story of my ham-life as nl997)
my radio-amateur "shack" in 2004
Before the NL-life started:
I grew up as one of 5 children in the city of Eindhoven, in the South of The Netherlands. (Where one used to be born in a Phips hospital and be burried a Philips caretaker....) My first contact with electronics at 13 when I got a EE experimenters kit on my birthday while a was in hospital. Back home again, one day I found the 1942 ARRL Handbook in the attic, that my father has used by his education at the 101 Airborne division, based in the USA and GB in WW2.
The “wonderous world of ham radio” was entered. It started with crystal-radio’s, 1-tube receivers and learning morse... The virus spread, and my elder brother got intered too. We listened to SSB, using 2 Broadcast receivers, tuned at the same frequency. From the little money we saved from after school jobs we bought our first real sw-radio; a BC348, former army receiver, and fitted a longwire. We found out that there was a ham-league in our country as well, and applied for SWL-registration nrs.
My elder brother got NL998, I got the 997. Later my younger brother applied, and got NL199. How kids grow up.... The NL998-story would be (in short) that he got adicted to DX-ing, and got licensed a couple of yeras later, and now is ON6NL, a real DX-crack, and contest manager of big Begium ham-union.
NL199 became PA0M and is very active by writing the “NL-Post” in the VERON magazine. I do’nt have a license now, though I got educated in electronics, worked in a vhf/uhf-designer at Philips etc. I spend a lot of years disturbing the radio waves with wireless sets WS19, homebrew waveguide transmitters and powerfull CB-stuff. (You could say I used to pirate at full sea hi) As a lot of us do, I grew gey hair and beard, got married and started raising kids (5 in our case that is), and calmed down .. (my XYL doubts that). So most time is sped now in home-brewing antennas, receivers, converters etc. and listeing to all kinds of radio in a lot of different modes. My “radio’s” are nostalgia, I like a lot of knobs to tune on. Last year I was dared to participate in a swl contest, at the age of 53, to see, if I still could stand up to the “young dogs”.That’s when I got involved in the SLP-contest from the VERON. My job now-a-day is project-engineer in evironmental technology, so that does not contain a lot of ham-related work. I make that up by spending my free time at the receiver or building things etc. I am NL997 now for about 40 years, it did not bore me one day during those years. Maybe I will be a “real talking ham” next year or maybe in 10 years, when all kids have left the parential home.... Till then I will keep sending QSL’s on the QSO’s of other hams, do JOTA’s , and keep my DX-ears in good condition on hf, vhf and uhf. I hope to hear (see, write) you all again I wish you all Good DX, and all the best to you and yours.
God Bless ! 73 from Jan, NL997 email:
nl997@web.de
