I was born and grew up in Kyoto.
I got my licence in 1968, at the age of 14, when I was a junior high school
student.
My first rig was Yaesu, FL-50 and FR-50.
I made a GP antenna at first, and enjoyed local QSO at 15m band.
I was the chief of the radio club in my junior high school
Soon I was interested in DXing, then I made a 4 element Yagi antenna for
15m band in my backyard.
I learned English at school, and after school I tried to use the sentences
which I learned at school that day in the QSOs with DX stations.
According to the old QSL cards I have collected, the first peak of my activity
was around 1970.
Perhaps I made QSOs with over 100 countries at this time.
I had to go QRT to prepare for the entrance examination for the university
in 1971.
In 1973, I became a medical student, and re-started amateur radio.
I made a 15m tower in my backyard with my friends..
I did not check the vertical, and we found the tower out of vertical after
it was completely built up.
We called it a "Pisa tower", but no big problem happened for
more than 10 years.
The second peak of my activity was around 1975.
I made a cubical quad antenna for 15 and 20 m band, and enjoyed CW as well
as SSB.
As I was a star player of the ice hockey team of my university, and I had
to learn a lot, I had little time to be on the air, and after I became
a medical doctor, I went into long QRT.
I moved to Tokyo in 1991. Mr. Ono, an experienced ham, a team-mate of my
ice hockey team in Tokyo, and now the President and CEO of NTT Docomo USA,
advised me to resume amateur radio.
My son also seems to be interested in amateur radio, I decided to resume
it in 1997.
I could use JA3TCH/1, but the power for the portable station is limited to be under 50 watts in Japan.
As I wanted to use amp for DXing , I got the new callsign, 7M4GTU.
But I still keep the callsign JA3TCH as a portable station.
Whenever I make a travel, I bring FT-817 and MP-1antenna or mobile whip,
and enjoy QSO from many district of this country.
Five watt QSO is as attractive as kw QSO, hi.
FL-50 & FR-50 and ?
home brew 4 ele yagi
elements were somewhat
bented by typhoon.
no problem !
Making a Pisa tower !!!
Feb, 1975
1970