CT2JKO

Operator

There is not much to say about me...

I'm 21 years old, and I'm a college student on IST (Instituto Superior Técnico). I'm on the second year, taking Biomedics Engineering. In the past I took part of school contests like the Physics Olympiads or Young Scientists and Investigators Contest.

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 Summer 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) and UHF(70cm), in FM, and the following HF bands: 80m, 40m, 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m (AM, FM and SSB). I operate mainly on digital modes on HF. Please see the Equipment and Station sections too. I had some limitations in the past, but right now I have permission to use the building's roof for my antenna installation. I keep trying to improve and making some contacts, which are quite funny. That's what matters.

73's,

Rui Pinto