Isle of Avalon Amateur Radio Club Chairman Chaz G6UVO

G6UVO took over from Matt M9MIM as Isle of Avalon Amateur Radio Club chairman at the 2026 AGM on the 28th August and introduces himself herewith:

I became a radio amateur in 1981 as a career move.

The small but famous computer company I worked for (I did the manuals and designed control panels) was always financially unstable, and in the end went bust. Prior to this I had been casting about for another job anyway, the writing having been not only on the wall but also elsewhere.

I tried to get a job with Electronics Today International magazine, which I read regularly and which one day unexpectedly advertised for a technical writer. Alas though I got an interview the editor Halvor Moorshead told me crossly that he wanted to hire me as a computer industry insider but the owners of the magazine wanted to break into the amateur radio market and he had just had them on the phone insisting that he hire someone with a radio licence and callsign (in fact though he did eventually do this ETI remained much as it was and never became an amateur radio publication).

Annoyed at not getting my way and determined not to let it happen again I bought an RAE manual, swotted up (as I had to, being only computer people) and went off to the City and Guilds Institute in London to do the exams.

In due course the Home Office, at that time the licensing authority, issued me with a Class B (non-Morse; VHF and up only) licence and a callsign which I couldn’t read, it having been scribbled in tiny drunken spider biro script on the front of a five page document done on a Roneo machine. I phoned up the Home Office (which was still allowed in those far-off days) and got them to tell me what it really was.

I duly bought a secondhand but still rather expensive FT-290 and a small linear, both of which I still have, together with an antenna and an ex-GCHQ (no serial number, funny connector) Racal RA-17 with which and the traditional long wire I listened to my G4-prefixed betters discussing their world on 40m.

Believing that there had to be more to amateur radio than “All G8s are Hippies, and all G6s are Skinheads!” I next joined RAYNET which as a former CCF Signals type was clearly my spiritual home. This was during the 1980s when there was great national controversy over the staging of major civil defence exercises like Square Leg, and the RAYNET group I was in actually split up over whether or not we ought to participate in such things. For the record I was in the faction which said that we should, and have as a RAYNET member taken part in similar exercises myself (along with a whole lot of other stuff that was rather more fun).

Having up to this point been a technical author (a leisurely trade) I made a sudden career move and became a TV producer and specialist cameraman which occupied much of my time until, while working for Martin-Baker Aircraft (the ejection seat people) and having recently qualified as a pilot (supposedly another career move) I contracted a rare and incurable neurological disease which led to my total grounding and in 2004 formal medical retirement.

On subsequently moving from the Home Counties to Glastonbury I first rejoined RAYNET, but alas being by this time registered disabled and dependent upon others for transport and also having at the time some difficulty in managing my condition I was insufficiently reliable and got medically retired from that too. However to this day I tell people in amateur radio circles that were I ever to be sawn in half by a seaside magician the word ‘RAYNET’ would be found neatly stencilled all the way through, like a stick of rock.

Round about this time the late Prof. Martin Wheeler G5FM, whom I already knew from his involvement with the Library of Avalon where my wife and I were trustees, and Mike White now 2E0RWW founded the Isle of Avalon Amateur Radio Club, which I duly joined. Having worked in ‘customer and service education’ I naturally took to training trainees and managed to assist a couple of people in getting a ticket.

While with the club my only claim to fame has been the development of the bamboo masted antenna with which the Club using largely an FT-450 has had some success in supporting Cadet Exercise Blue Ham on the restricted 60m (5MHz) military band for which few commercial antennas are made. This antenna, originally made from horse fence but since rewired with Ag/Kevlar, is still in use.

Having taken over as chairman I ought first to thank outgoing chairman Matt M9MIM for his unprecedentedly generous support for the Club for year after year. Though a very small Club we are extraordinarily well-found, with our own semi-secret headquarters Somewhere in England, a very comfortable field clubhouse usable all year round, its comprehensive shack properly equipped and maintained and its storage unit full of spares; even its own car park. We are also a training and examining Club recognised by the RSGB, with good relations with neighbouring Clubs, businesses and individuals. All of this might be expected of a huge organisation with dozens of wealthy members able to pay substantial subscriptions, but as the Glastonbury Club we continue to manage on what the Assembly Rooms call ‘a Magic Hat basis’, with no subscriptions, no bank account, everything done by donation, members contributing what they can, and a minimum of administration and paperwork. We also have a weekly 2m net whose regulars are very regular indeed, and weekly meetings to which all those who usually turn up usually turn up. A very large proportion of all of this is due to Matt, following whom is going to be quite a tall order.

A fundamental principle of engineering is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. I do not therefore expect to change very much around the Club, though I would hope to look into broadening our support for Blue Ham into closer connections, administrative requirements permitting, with local Cadet groups, and increasing the use of 70cm for which I am for no clear reason an enthusiast. We are fortunate in having a few members who are also members of other clubs which can only assist with joint ventures, something which we have yet to explore properly.

The most important thing seems to be to attract new members, though as we are not dependent upon subscription revenue to pay our bills we can afford to be patient. We now have a developing CB section which also includes users of PMR446, the most likely system to be used for outreach tasks like cadet training, and have had some contact with people interested in radio (such as LPD433) for communication between machines rather than humans. Also we have a number of outstanding projects such as the satellite earth station and large HF beam. There is plenty to do.

Those sneaky enough to look me up on QRZ.com will find that I am represented by a photo of a giant Panda wearing a US issue spacesuit, and those sufficiently patient actually to log in will be told among other things that my favourite comms mode is ‘Telepathy’. Nitpicking detail addicts will certainly observe that the page saying these things is ‘managed’ by the late G5FM, who created it entirely without my knowledge or consent when I once told him that I didn’t bother with QRZ.com because whose damn business is it anyway; I choose to leave it thus as a memorial to this great man’s magnificent sense of humour.