About Me

I guess as most amateur radio operators I started to operate on 11 meters (Citizens Band). In 1996 as a 13 year old boy, I discovered an abandoned radio in my Dad’s second hand car that he bought. When I asked him what the radio was for he could not answer me. After investigating a bit I managed to get the radio working and we started listening to the people on channel 27 (27.275 MHz). The radio was a Royce 639. Listening for a good few months I decided that I also want to talk to the people on the radio. I made a good couple of friends and it was time well spent! I can remember sitting cold winter nights in front of the garage talking to my friends. n January 1997 I convinced my dad to buy me a “BIG” half wave dipole antenna that I could install on a short tower so that I could sit inside and talk to my friends. Things really started to take off from here!

In the mid of 1997 one of my friends told me about DX'ing on 27Mhz. He also showed me a hidden feature on my Royce 639 radio that converted the radio to 27.555Mhz (Pirate Calling Frequency). Dx'ing on 27 MHz is illegal in South Africa and most countries anyway! I started out using the call sign 44SA106 but was soon discovered by a local called Bill that was part of an international DX group called the Whiskey Delta DX Group that was operating from Great Britain! Bill arranged free membership for me with the call sign 44WDC106. I operated as 44WDC106 for a good two years as a casual operator. In 1998 I had a contact with a gentleman in France called Fred using a call sign 14SD001. Fred was the start of my big DX career!

Fred was in control of one of the biggest radio groups in the 27Mhz world at that time. He arranged membership from France and I was awarded the call sign 44SD106. Fred encouraged me to build a station in a rare location and to start calling CQ DX! So with my little Royce and Dipole antenna I packed my bags and made my way to the Waterberg Mountain Range that is situated in the far northern part of South Africa.

In the above pictures you will notice the Royce 639 radio and a lamp. There was no power so I had to operate on battery power and during hours of darkness I used the lamp to provide light on this "modern" station in the middle of Wild Africa! On the right hand side was my QSL card that was printed by Sugar Delta in France. This was my first station I operated in WILD AFRICA!

In 2004, I received a Kenwood TS140S transceiver as a gift for my 21st birthday. This radio was capable of transmitting 100 watts and could work frequency split that opened up a entire new world for me. The Waterberg Mountain Range Area that I operated from in 1999 was declared as a United Nations Biosphere and I was asked by a DX group called Lima Radio from Italy to go and operate as a special activation from this area for them. They awarded me a call sign called 44LR/WB, the WB stood for Waterberg Biosphere. They enforced all types of rules on me and I had to send them a post card to prove that I was in the Waterberg area. The objective of the activation was to work 1000 stations and I had one year to do it...

During the 44LR/WB activation period, there was a contest scheduled called the Sugar Delta World contest. This was my first contest that I was going to participate in and was the biggest world wide contest on the 27 MHz spectrum at that time. The contest ran over 2 weekends and for 48 hours on both weekends. The objective was to work as many contacts as possible with as many countries as possible, as long as you stayed within the designated pirate band of 27 and 26 MHz. I knew that in a contest like this I was going to need a bit more than just my 100 Watt transmitter.  After a long battle I received sponsorship with a Kenwood TS480 by one of our local Kenwood Dealers. The Kenwood TS480 was a 200 Watt transmitter and the antenna was yet again the dipole.

SD-News: SD World Contest 2005 Results
Posted by 14SD002 on Wednesday, January 25 @ 16:44:41 GMT (350 reads)

Here are the results of SD World Contest 2005:

SD Mono Operator:

As you will note from the above results I placed 3rd in the contest. This was my last major activity on 27Mhz pirate DX.

Even though I had obtained a Restricted Amateur License in 1999 that gave me permission to operate on all amateur frequencies above 50Mhz, I only started working DX on Amateur Radio when I received my present open amateur license in May 2006 (ZS6DXB). I obtained my ZS by building a 1 Watt solid state transmitter.

I made one of my best radio friends during this time. His name is Daniel ZS6JR who is involved with arranging amateur DX expeditions to countries around Africa. The CQ WPX contest was only 6 days away when Daniel told me about the contest, we decided that I was going to compete as a single rookie operator. Keep in mind that we had to find a venue and erect the station plus pack away the station after contest; this is not a fixed station

Well, what can I say about amateur contesting. We managed to work 1781 contacts with 787 countries giving us a score of +/- 4.3 million judging by the current claimed scores for the WPX contest it looks promising that I have hopefully managed to place in the top 5 worldwide in the Rookie class.

Finally the results for CQ WPX Phone contest were released in January 2007. To my surprise I have won Rookie Single Operator All Band High. That gives me my first world title as World Rookie Single Operator High Power winner. It comes as a shock as I did not expect a world win for this contest as I only had my ZS (open amateur license) for a couple of days and learned how to work amateur HF bands during the contest.

Results for CQ WPX 2006 Rookie Phone contest is as follows:

1. ZS6DXB Rhy with 3 717 896 points

2. UA9JDP Sergey with 3 190 917 points

3. F4DSK Dimitri with  2 142 409 points

Official results for CQ WPX 2006 phone contest can be found on www.cqwpx.com