I became interested in becoming a radio ham back in the early 90s, I’d recently moved house and the chap opposite had a rather large aerial in his back garden. It turned out that he was a CB radio operator and that the aerial was a half wave vertical on top of a scaffold pole.
I popped over to see him sometimes and started chatting to other people on the radio. It wasn't long before I'd bought my own CB radio and was happily chatting away. One of the chaps that I started speaking with lived close by and invited me round for coffee one day.
He happened to mention that his brother was a licensed radio amateur ( I think he held a G8 call sign) and that some radio hams could use the HF bands (Shortwave) if they'd passed the morse code* test.
This sounded much more interesting than CB and I wondered how I could listen to radio hams in other countries. Very soon afterwards, I bought myself a Sony world band radio (ICF-SW7600) and started tuning around the HF amateur radio bands.
I'd already found out what the ham frequencies were and that they mostly used single side band, either upper (USB) or lower (LSB).. Within a short space of time I was listening to 2 American hams on 20 meters :)
Some time later I bought a radio scanner from Nevada Radio and discovered the local amateurs on 2M and 70cms. I often used to listen to a semi-local repeater in Portsmouth on 145.775 MHz called GB3PC.
*UK radio amateurs have not had to learn Morse code to obtain their licence since July 2003.
How I gained my Ham Radio licence
Now that I'd become so interested in ham radio, the 2 of us went to evening classes at Southampton Technical College to learn about radio and study for the RAE (Radio Amateurs’ Examination)..
We sat a 2 part exam; Part 1 (Licence conditions and transmitter interference), and Part 2 (Operating procedures, practice and theory).
When we sat our exams, in the early 90s, the RAE was run by the City and Guilds. Towards the end of the 90s, it was taken over by the RSGB (Radio Society of Great Britain) when they introduced the Foundation, Intermediate and Full radio licence.
I'm pleased to say that, after a long wait for the postie, we both passed the RAE first time :)
I seem to remember that I had to send off my certificate to Ofcom,UK's communications regulator, and wait for a letter. Within a short space of time, I heard back from them and was allocated a 'B-class' call sign.
Not long after this, I bought a second hand Alinco DR-112 for the 2 meter band and a Diamond X-300 aerial went up on the side of my house.. I was finally on air and enjoying amateur radio
Retirement
Fast forward 30 years or so and things are very different. I'm now retired and no longer live in the house with the garden, so no HF aerials. I've moved into a small retirement flat (apartment) but all is not lost. I've been able to put up a small antenna for 2 meters and 70 cms which seem to receive the local DMR repeater quite well. I've also been able to put up a random wire and am playing with FT8. It's not so clever on 40M but seems ok on 20M and 10M. Experimenting with antennas is all a part of Ham Radio so I will continue to make the best of a bad location. Radio in retirement is still possible.
Published: 23 October 2026
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