About G4WXN

My name is Derek Haden. I have been a licenced Radio Amateur since 1982. I became interested in Amateur Radio, through CB radio, I was not happy with just operating, I wanted to know what went on inside that little black box. Some "Old School" Amateurs seem to see this as the dumbing down of the Amateur Radio World, I have to say I disagree, anything that encourages people into the hobby is good.

I first held a B class licence with the callsign of G6PAM. I really did not like that callsign, I would get comments such as "so you got a call with your wifes name?", well no, my wife at the time wasn't named Pam. I did think about requesting a different callsign, but at the time all Amateur licences were handled by the Home Office. The only way to change a callsign at the time, was to give up the current callsign and re-apply, I would have had to wait for 6 months or more for this to happen, so I suffered it.

I struggled with, and passed the Morse test, so I could get the A Licence. In 1984 I became G4WXN, at the time I was living in Wymondham Norfolk, and a good friend at the time, nicknamed me "Wymondhams eXtra gNome", most of the phonetics were wrong, but it was funny and it kind of stuck with me.

Around 1988 my interest in Radio took a nose dive, frankly I just wasn't interested anymore. There were many contibutory factors, but that was it, I sold all my gear, and stopped operating. It had been my intention to keep the licence live, but eventually let it lapse.

Fast Forward to 2009, for reasons I have yet to fathom, I suddenly and inexplicably decided I wanted to get back into radio. I have no idea why this suddenly came over me, or why I thought it might be a good idea, but it did.

First off I needed to get my licence back. I was surprised how easy it was. The people at Ofcom were most helpful, and the website was full of useful stuff. I dug out my old documents, documents that had almost ended in the shredder 6 month before, that's how uninterested I was. I still had all my documents, well almost, however to my horror I could not find the City and Guilds exam certificate, I had everything else, but not the certificate. So with some trepidation I sent off my application with all the documentation I had, which included my original licence, and several change of address slips, and kept my fingers crossed.

After about 2 weeks, I checked my account on the Ofcom website, and to my delight, there was my licence, and a few days later the hard copy landed on the doormat.

Ironically around 6months after getting my licence back, I did find the missing City and Guilds Certificate.

So time to get operating again. My original radio had been a Yaesu FT290r, these things were the ultimate in portable 2metre multimode operating, and were immensely versatile. Yaesu made and sold millions, with a Mk2 version adding a newer look and a few bells and whistles. So when I saw an FT290 for sale on eBay, I impetuously put in a bid and won. Unfortunately my impetuousness came back to bite me. Straight out the box the radio would not work when connected to a PSU, however I put some batteries in it, and it fired up fine. Back in the 80's I had been able to work GB3NB repeater from my (now) home town of Brandon, however 2 factors had changed during my 21year sebatical, the repeater had been moved further north, and CTCSS. Without CTCSS I could not open repeaters. Now back to the power problem, the rig would still not work on a PSU, so I contacted the suppliers Waters and Stanton, who frankly were quite dismissive, however they sent a new powerlead, this one was so far wrong it fell out of the back of the radio!! This saga went on for about a month, till eventually I lost patients with Waters and Stanton, and requested by money back, which they did.

I decided if I was going to operate again, then I was doing it right, and eventually purchased a Yaesu FT897D, every frequency from 1.8mhz up to 440mhz, all in one box. What a baptism of fire!! I had to learn to operate this beast, there is so much in this box, that it really is difficult to just power on and go. I took the manuals with me to work, just so I could read them. I built a 2metre Slim Jim antenna (see projects page), this was later replaced with a Moonraker co-linear for 2m and 70cm

I was briefly on HF using a Hustler vertical antenna, however I was so disappointed with the whole HF scene that I put the whole lot on eBay and sold it. I have now purchased an Icom ID-880 and IC-80AD for D-star. D-Star is a baptism of fire, with the rigs programmed I am able to work the world and his grandmother. There are amateurs out there who see D-Star as not being real radio, how wrong can you be?