5H3EE - about me

What are you doing there, are you on dx-pedition, holiday or on business?
Thats what Im often asked. Neither this nor that, Im just at my second home. My tanzanian wife Zawadi and our little boy Malique are living in Dar es Salaam...and more and more me too. By the way, Malique is probably the most enthusiastic local "operator" in Tanzania. Only that I dont like his bad habit of entering pile ups with "echo echo", but not the complete callsign...Hi. Or he did just forget the rest, when copying daddy?

"echo echo!"...

As it began
May be the picture above is indeed the start of a hamcareer, who knows. Mine began similarly. Dad was a ham (Y51XE) and so I came into contact with the radio. With 17 years I was lucky to pass the licence exams with the first attempt and Y51UE went on air.
Some active cw-enthusiasts (Tina Y21BE; Egon Y51WE; Fred Y24IF and my dad) were at our club in Strausberg and so I started cw-only as well. Later then I was working also in fone. But I was always checking the log, before leaving the club, if at least I did more cw- then ssb-QSOs. Anyway, still I got some funny comments from time to time: "Dont you know cw, Mike?"
We have had a nice time at the club in Strausberg, and it has been a great school for me.

In 1983, the famous Teltow-TRX at work...

DX and Contesting on HF has been my playground at this time, and it is still. Before and after school I was at the club, probably had my most active time ever.
Unfortunately not often we could win two weeks holiday with a contest, as we did in 1987(right picture). I need more of those contests...

Egon, Ron and me going to Primorsko in 1987

"QSL Biography"
Over the years the QSL cards have been changing, going along with changes in life. When the school days ended, and so my time at the club there in Strausberg, I had to join a very special kind of a DX-pedition: Military service. Fortunately I served as a full time cw-operator and could even improve my skills that way. Some of the guys, I was having "QSOs" with them in the army networks, are still active high speed-cw hams.

Coming back from the army, I was studying communications engineering in Ilmenau. Ilmenau? - Isn´t that, where the Y34K-contestclub(now DF0HQ) is located? Yes, it is and I have had the chance to join them. I learned a lot about contesting and others, but probably not as much as I could have. I guess, I was not fanatic enough...

Needless to talk about the incidents in Germany, that let us say "Bye!" to our Y2-callsigns. Unfortunately with the new DL-calls we lost some speciality while DXing and Contesting.
Anyway, the 90th were also marked by spending much time for family and job. Thus I was not very active for a couple of years.

Actually the fever came back in 2004. Zawadi was in the office all the day, when I discovered the 5I3A-club, while exploring Dar.
I was welcomed there at the Institute of Technology, but not really well prepared: A mostly cw-op without a keyer? I was only having a notebook with me and had to build a simple interface first. Soon I got my licence and did start enjoying the pile ups. Using CT, running a pile up without keyer was not a problem. But often I thought to myself: "Guys, dont ask me questions! You dont know, how I am missing my keyer!..."

Four years rolled on since then. Meanwhile I am QRV from home, still with a simple antenna setup and more attention to the lowbands. After beeing very active in 2007 my QSO rate has dropped down dramatically since January 2008, caused by my new job here in Dar es Salaam. Unfortunately our 6 days working week is not that advantageous for contest activities...

And what will be next? Well, in Africa it is not common, to plan more then the next three days...Hi.
Vladimir/UA4WHX once said, when visiting 5I3A: "People are all the time asking, where am I going next? I´m always on the way home, but not taking the very straight one." Somehow its like that...

By the way, who could work me for a new one, should thank my XYL:
She is the one "to blame", that I am here...