CT2JKO

About

The Website:

The first website I have designed was Astronomia em Portugal (Astronomy in Portugal), on 2005/2006, where I published NASA articles translated to Portuguese. The website is still online, and you can visit it on http://astronomiaemportugal.com.sapo.pt. Because of light pollution I lost a bit of my interest on amateur astronomy observations, and eventually stopped updating the website. Sorry to all visitors!

Along with astronomy, I found another hobby: meteorology, or weather, as you like. I opened another website (OMAC-Observatório Meteorológico de Agualva-Cacém), with an online weather station, having the server at my place. In the same year (2006) I got into Ham Radio, and opened a special section for amateur radio on that site. As my interest about the radio subject grew, I tough It made more sense to make a ham radio website with a small section dedicated to weather. That's when ct2jko.com was born, in 2007.

The graphic design was not great, but it had a lot of stuff, especially an instruction manuals section with 3.5GB. In 2009 I made a great upgrade and the visual of the website was greatly improved. In 2010 I felt the hosting costs were too high and had to transfer the domain to a cheaper hosting company. However, I would have to delete the manuals section, because of it's high disk space needs. I did it. Decided to give higher priority to original articles and media, rather than third party files.

Now that you know the most of ct2jko.com's history, you can read a bit more about me!

The Author:

Rui MR Pinto, born in Lisbon in 1989, grew and studied in Agualva-Cacém, Sintra, Lisbon.

The interest for science has always been present. My first real hobby was amateur astronomy, in 2005. I have several telescopes and I still enjoy watching the skies, but it's impossible to do on the city due to light pollution! Actually you don't need to have a telescope to watch beautiful things up there. Go to the country or a really dark place, wait a few minutes to let your eyes get used to the dark and look up. Binoculars are a good choice for beginners. Then you can go to the telescope. But this is not the right place to tell you about astronomy. Maybe one day I develop a website section about it!

During the my peak of interest about astronomy I was given my first weather station, and that's when I got into this subject, in 2005/2006! I bought my real weather station, La Crosse WS-3610 and improvised a web site, called OMAC (Observatório Meteorológico Amador do Cacém - Amateur Weather Observatory of Cacém). Then I added a webcam and got a better computer for server.

The interest about Ham Radio started in February of 2006, after a school visit to an association - AMRAD. We were talking a bit about electromagnetic waves and modulation in the classes (11th grade-I was 17), and we made that small visit, which was a bit annoying to some partners, but not for me. After that I made some research on the internet by myself to lean a bit more about this subject. Equipments, antennas, etc...it was a bit confusing, especially the difference between CB and amateur radio. And how to become a ham radio operator? Licence? Ugh... It was easy after all. I bought my first equipment (Yeasu FT-8000), improvised a dipole, conected it to a battery and started listening to the police, repeaters and ocasionally other people. I didn't hear a lot of activity, so it was annoying and I putted the radio for sale on Ebay (The same place where I had bought it). The price was very nice and I wouldn't lose money. However, a few days later I cancelled the listing and gave myself and the radio a second chance. Got a better antenna and took my licence in July 2006, receiving the callsign CT5JKO, allowing me to operate VHF and UHF. That was the beginning.

One year later, on July 2007, I upgraded my licence to category B, allowing me to operate much more bands and modes. On September 2007 I bought my HF Transceiver (Icom IC-735) and tuner, operating especially on the 40m band on phone till December 2007, when I tried PSK and other digital modes. Now I work VHF(2m) on all model, UHF(70cm) on FM, and all the HF bands on all modes. Most of the time I operate on digital modes on HF.

Before dinner I go to the radio and chat to some local stations (in 2m and 70cm, FM) which operators I know in person. Sometimes I turn on the shortwave transceiver to see what's up and work some distant stations too. It's possible to make radio even when you are doing something else. It's called monitoring. Just turn on the radio on a frequency you know some people usually meet (or a call frequency) and wait till someone calls! On the 2 meter band, for example, you have to wait for propagation openings to make distant contacts, so you need to listen a lot! I just turn on my vintage VHF portable radio and wait till I hear someone calling on SSB, from Canary Islands, for example!!!

Please read some articles, take a look at my simple equipment and antennas and have fun! I keep trying to improve my working conditions and making some contacts, when I have the time for it! That's what matters.

73,

Rui Pinto