ABOUT ME

At a young age I remember fiddling with an old ITT Schaub-Lorenz shortwave radio in our kitchen. The antenna had broken off and I remember sticking everything from knitting needles to whisks in the socket to get it working. The commercial hf bands were alive in those days (early 80s) and the blips, blahs, dits and dahs of cw, teletype and far off heavily faded shortwave signals really intrigued me.

In a time before my time my father was big a CBer, in the European style, he worked DX with his 11m vertical, but had all but given it up when us kids came along. Unwittingly the interest was passed on though!

My first pocket radio as a kid was a simple Philips AM/FM one. At night I would sit awake and listen to the MW signals from all over Europe, trying to identify each language.

Radio took a back seat for a couple of decades but in 2008 I got back into SWLing and decided in early 2009 to get my Canadian Radio Amateur Certificate. I haven’t looked back since.

My day job is in visual effects for film, TV and commercials. I’m pretty proficient on a keyboard and this dovetails nicely into my fondness for contesting.

My apartment QTH is small but sufficient for my needs. The thrill of working a ‘new one’ from 140ft up in a high-rise in downtown Vancouver can’t be beat. I don’t have access to the roof so I make use of my balcony for antenna space. I’m getting close to my ‘condo’ DXCC and recently just completed my ‘condo’ WAS!

When the opportunity arises I love working the pile-ups at bigger stations and for the 2011 CQ WW DX SSB had the chance to operate at PJ2T. In the past I’ve been part of multi-op teams at W7IV and VE7NSR.

The future for VA7DXC is more contesting and more DX. I love the adventure that is travel and hopefully will get the chance to operate in some far flung places in the future on dxpeditions big or small.

73 Dave
VA7DXC / VE7ZX / EI8GNB

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