Early Years from JN65hq

In the 1970s and 1980s, I was active from JN65hq, a small town in the Venetian countryside. I achieved my best results on VHF using a TC20 — a 20-element Yagi antenna of solid, quite standard design, conceived and built by I2ODI. With its 8.10-meter boom length, the TC20 served me well and enabled excellent contacts.

Back then, moonbounce (EME) was still mostly done in CW, and one of my greatest satisfactions was completing EME contacts with just a single antenna — a real technical and personal milestone.

The City Years: JN55wj

From 1996 to 2010, I operated from JN55wj (central Padova). This site turned out to be rather poor for VHF DX due to heavy radio noise from urban sources — including computers and servers in university offices and labs nearby.

I used a 17-element F9FT Yagi antenna during this period, but the usable take-off was limited to directions between 20 and 180 degrees.

A New Start in JN55vk

At the end of 2011, I moved to the outskirts of Padova (JN55vk) and installed a LLY (Log-Loop-Yagi) antenna — a highly innovative three-section design, entirely developed and built by I3DLI.

Despite a slightly shorter boom (about 7.40 meters), the LLY proved to be one of the best antennas I’ve ever used on VHF, delivering excellent performance and mechanical reliability. Its sharp and clean radiation pattern would have been ideal for EME work — but by then, most moonbounce activity had moved to digital modes, which are difficult for a blind operator to use. Sadly, I never had the chance to exploit the LLY for EME.

HF with a Smart Touch

Paolo (I3DLI) also came up with a clever solution to use the LLY’s small supporting tower as a ground-plane antenna for HF bands. With this very modest setup — and just 100 watts — I managed to work stations all over the world on the 40-meter band. Another great source of satisfaction.

A Pause — For Now

In September 2024, due to condominium issues, I was forced to dismantle my antennas. I don’t know if or when I’ll be able to return to the air, but I sincerely hope to resume amateur radio activity in the future.

My logbook

My QSO entries, that I could recover back to 1978, are recorded at www.qrz.com.

Since I am blind, I have problems in managing paper QSL cards.
In order to overcome this issue, I have set up an experimental on-line version of my station logbook, with the possibility of displaying a confirmation sheet for each entry.
I apologise with allOMs who did not receive my confirmation and hope this attempt will offer a reasonable replacement for QSL card.

Go to my logbook search

My VHF station

• transceiver ICOM IC-746, 100 W;
• receiver Drake R 4C with converter and preamplifier (1 dB NF);
• 19 elements LLY (Log-Loop-Yagi) antenna by I3DLI;
• solid-state LD-MOS Beko power amplifier HLV-1000;
• DTR by DK7KF to decode high speed CW;

DX sounds

This is a sample of the recording I made during my random EME contact with K1WHS, FN43mj, in September 4, 1983 from JN65hq, with a single 20 elements long Yagi and 300 W power. On that Sunday afternoon, at the end of international September contest, my antenna was randomly pointed to the moon at its set position (at that moment, I was not aware of this circumstance). I heared a weak but very clear CQ de K1WHS in CW, then I answered and immediately got a 549 OOO report> and completed the QSO in few minutes.

Here you can listen to more DX sounds, including:

• Aurora opening of July 25, 1981.
• Aurora opening of March 31, 2001.
• Leonids meteor shower, November 19, 2002.

Any MS schedule proposals?

Either fill in the on-line form or send me an E-mail message.
To avoid TVI problems, I prefer early morning time.

Hamradio for blind people

This section (in Italian) is designed to present various contributions, due to different authors, all relating to devices, appliances, information that might be useful for blind amateur radio people, as part of their hamradio interests.

Questa pagina (in italiano) è dedicata a contributi di vari autori, tutti riguardanti accorgimenti, apparecchi, informazioni che potrebbero essere utili ai radioamatori non vedenti nell'ambito dell'esercizio dell'attività di radioamatore.

My pieces of software

In the good old times of MS-DOS, I made some pieces of freely usable software. You can see:

• Ham-radio software.
• Utility programs, particularly designed to be used on personal computers equipped with speech or braille devices. The package DOC can be configured to be used in any language; the remaining ones are in Italian.