I am a physicist, was born in '67, grew up in Saxony and have lived for some years in the country of the Anglo-Saxons, more precisely, in West Yorkshire. My hobbies (other than amateur radio) are philately, railways and history.
In late September 1993 I obtained my first amateur radio certificate as DG0LFH, and a few days later I went to work in Nice for several months. Once there, I sought out some local radio amateurs (mainly members of the Antibes radio club - special thanks to them for helping me to improve my French!), and bought a second-hand VHF/UHF handheld transceiver. It still works!
Back then, if you had not passed a Morse test, you were restricted to using 144 MHz and higher frequencies, commonly called "VHF". Without major technical effort, and without "enhanced propagation", this generally means little more than line-of-sight communications. Where do you see the most from? From above. Thus, instead of wasting time on the beach, I visited the more prominent points in the Département. From the Observatoire de Nice, from Eze-Village, or from a saddle between Sospel und Menton I could contact stations in Corsica and in the regions of Marseille and Genoa. The Italian amateurs in particular seemed to enjoy cross-border contacts.
One weekend I climbed on foot from St. Etienne de Tinée (1200 m a. s. l.) up to Cîme de la Bonnette (2860 m), only to descend again after barely a handful of contacts because of an approaching thunderstorm. I even flagged down a car in order to get away from the worst of the rain ... still, it was good fun, even if SOTA had not been invented yet! I should like to do this again some time.
Every now and then I made a short trip to Italy, Switzerland, or back to Germany, and I lugged the hand-held around everywhere I went. The number of contacts from the Gornergrat was rather disappointing, but I enjoyed the occasional mobile contacts from a bus, coach or train very much.
Back in Germany, I joined the local chapter Y 09 Potsdam of DARC of which I remained a member until 2004. The club station at the University had to be dismantled in 1993. One of my colleagues used to complain about a big hole in the window frame of his office through which the antenna feedline once had passed. It remained for some years until the building was renovated ...
Working in Potsdam meant being far away from "real mountains", but there are quite a few prominent points around Berlin that make VHF operation easier. The flat roof of the institute building was not too bad, either - I once contacted a station on the Baltic coast with just 2 W and a dipole antenna. Hellersdorfer Berg and Ahrensfelder Berg, two hills which I could easily reach from my flat in Berlin, were good places for portable operations, too - distinctly elevated over the surroundings, few trees, great for collecting grid squares and club identifiers ... until wireless headphones and similar "applications" spilled all over the 70 cm band. I also tried other "bumps" in the landscape of Brandenburg, but found most of them too densely wooded, or too far away from my quarters to be easily accessible by S-Bahn and bicycle.
Once I got multi-mode radios for 2 m und 70 cm, I took them up on the heights north of my home town Geringswalde. There stands a handsome outlook tower which in the 1990s, however, was not open to the public. Still, good VHF contacts are possible even from its foot. Had I gone there more often, I might have worked stations much further away than Neuruppin. Nowadays the tower is in the care of Geringswalde's CB club - good for them!
In January 1998 I finally caught up on the telegraphy exam (back then, it was still a prerequisite for access to the shortwave bands). The exam fee was only 20 Mark. A few weeks later it became an awful lot more expensive. I did not start operating on shortwave straight away - I still needed a radio for that. After a while, I got a slighly knackered FT-757GX. Even with the power control almost all the way to the left, I could work stations in Siberia, South Africa, and South America - thanks to the active Sun around 2000.
In 1997/98 I worked in Katlenburg-Lindau, used the club station of the Institute for Aeronomy on occasion, and travelled to the nearby Harz mountains for some VHF contests. More often, however, I took advantage of cheap weekend train tickets, travelled all over the country and made VHF contacts "on the go". A visit to Karlsruhe was a disappointment ... I didn't work a single French station despite being close to the French border and calling in French!
In the meantime I have come to prefer Morse telegraphy as a mode of operation, and I have joined some telegrapy clubs:
From October 1998 I worked at Brunel University in Uxbridge, Hillingdon Borough, London, first as M/DL2LFH/p and from January 1999 until July 2000 as M0CEF. The university used to have a club station, which, however, was rarely used at that time and which was closed in May 1999 (where did I see similar things happen before?). No more shortwave operations from England for me at that time, just 2 m and 6 m; 70 cm was an awfully quiet band already then.
2000 - 2004 I was back in the old country, working at the Museum für Naturkunde. A second-hand QRP Plus became my "new" shortwave rig. I mainly operated as a portable station from Potsdam. Thanks to the still active Sun, its 5 W and a provisional antenna (a wire zig-zagging all across the balcony and serving as a clothes line on occasion) were enough to work Siberia and Chile. Ever now and then I took part in a VHF contest (mainly on 70 cm) in order to boost the local club's standing in the results table, and I helped to operate the club station during field days.
In April 2004 I moved to Bristol. At the same time I left the club in Potsdam and joined the radioclub W21 Merseburg. After some time operating as M/DL2LFH/p I re-activated my British callsign and joined the RSGB. In late 2005 I moved to West Yorkshire. I kept using the QRP+ and the old Yaesu (which was repaired in the meantime) with wire aerials, also using special prefixes (MO, MQ, MR) on suitable occasions.
When the company I was working for had nothing left for me to do, I looked for new work and found it in Hannover. Thus, in September 2012 I put my radio suitcase on my bicycle and took the ferry across the North Sea. Until autumn 2013 I operated portable from JO42VJ, then I found a house in JO42WJ. I still like portable operations, and with a small three-band QRP rig I have operated from Northern Brandenburg, Belgium, Greenland, and Switzerland. In June 2025 I changed clubs again and am now a member of a href = "https://amateurfunk-hannover.de/">H13 Hannover.
I have grown rather fond of the many "... on the air" programs such as SOTA, WWFF, COTA, and hope to be able to activate a few interesting places myself in the near future.
Considering that so many radio amateurs have rigs for 2 m and/or 70 cm, I simply cannot understand why there is rarely ever a reply to a call on 145,500 MHz or 433,500 MHz - after all, these are the calling frequencies!
I prefer simplex contacts. I fell that repeater stations, Echolink and similar techniques (useful as they may be) distract from the radio contact itself. Still, let everybody find salvation after their own fashion, as the King of Prussia put it many years ago ...
Operating mobile from a car is not really exciting any more. Ever tried ham radio from a railway train? Back when the weekend ticket on the German railways was really cheap, I travelled the length and the width of the country and collected new contacts on the go. With the Deutschland-Ticket it might be even easier - but the tinted windows of modern railway carriages block radio signals rather efficiently.
I am sure that operating mobile from a bicyle is good fun - maybe I'll find a way to fit an aerial to my old bone shaker, too ;-).
Neither LoTW nor eQSL have really achieved the flexibility of the classical paper QSL card yet. Thus I do not like it when people (in particular contesters) insist on only electronic confirmations. Please, at least reply to old-fashioned cards that were sent to you, or get somebody to do it for you. There is so much information that may be of interest to a radio ham, that the electronic systems can hardly deal with it.
callsigns on the air these days. If only the many special event stations would definitely tell us their locations! Sometimes they don't even write it on the QSL cards. In such cases I'd rather hea a station with an ordinary individual callsign, perhaps portable from a place I haven't heard anybody else from before.
Why have so many university club stations closed down? A university, in particular if it has got science or engineering departments, should have enough clever people among staff and students who are able to support an amateur station ...
Last update: 2026-03-29
vy 73 de DL2LFH (alias M0CEF)
Jan-Martin Hertzsch
e-mail
My main amateur radio page
I cannot guarantee for contents and functionality of hyperlinks. Let me know if you notice any changes.