My name is Tom and my callsign is SP5UAF. My station is located in Sulejówek – small town about 20 kilometers east from Warsaw. My family comes from the Podlasie (eastern region of Poland) and my parents moved to Sulejówek in sixties.
The hobby of my life is amateur radio. If only possible I spend my spare time at my transceiver, looking for new contacts. Thanks to this great hobby I met many great people. HAM Radio had impact on my life in many aspects…
I started my HAM Radio adventure in the Scouts Radio Club SP5ZCC. We were crazy enough to have big ideas and we were able to make real many of them real. We were able to build a very nice station (with monoband Yagi antennas and plenty of wires) and we have many achievements. The station was located in the building of the secondary school – big and flat roof and also only small buildings around.
Unfortunately after many years of and after changes in the school administration they told us that HAM radio station is not welcome in the school anymore. We had to remove all the antennas from the roof and leave the school building. The club station still exists but we have no good QTH now and we are active mostly portable (for example from scouts camps).
But first of all we’ve built a team of real friends in our club. We share not only the passion for HAM radio but also our joys and sorrows, we organize family meetings etc. I am proud to be a member of this group and I hope I always be one of SP5ZCC members.
I am active on bands almost every day. I love DXing and contesting but I pay the same attention to all contacts. From my home station I am active mostly on CW and digital modes (PSK, RTTY, JT65, JT9, FT4, FT8 etc). I’ve worked 325 DXCC entities (confirmed by QSL cards) so far. I am an LoTW user and I used to upload my logs daily. From time to time I also upload my logs to eQSL. I am a member of the Club Team SP5ZCC/SN5Z, SO4M Contest Team, SP DX Club, AGCW-DL, 9A-CW-Club, European PSK Club, Team SN0HQ, European DX Foundation (Life Member) and many digital clubs (EPC, CDG, DMC, NDG, FT8DMC, 30MDG).
Having rather modest station sometimes I visit big-gun stations of my friends, to mention SP4MPG, SP7GIQ or SP7SP (SK). For the same reason sometimes I organize contest expeditions to other countries (LX, GU, CU). Last years I mostly participate jn team efforts from SO4M. I am a member of the Team SO4M – a contest team of the SP4POB club station (station hosted and maintained by Mirek SP4MPG).
At home I am using Ten-Tec OMNI VII and I also have my old FT-1000MP (a kind of retired now). There is not too much place for big antennas in my QTH. I was using a Butternut HF9V for many years but I had to replace it. Last two years I am using just a long wire (about 60 meters, in inv-L shape) feeded via the CG-3000. This simple antenna setup turns out to be surprisingly effective. I use the DX Lab Suite for everyday logging and DX chasing. It is a great package of HAM Radio tools. It has just everything you need. For contesting I use N1MM Logger+. For digital modes I also use MixW or WSJT-X by K1JT and sometimes other software. I also use other HAM software tools – there are plenty of them. Many tools are available completely free – I would like to say “THANK YOU” to all software developers who make they work available free for the HAM community.
I am also a QSL manager for DX activities of my friend Mirek SP5IXI/VK6DXI (7X0DX, 9M8DX, 9M8DX/2, TF/SP5IXI, Z21DXI etc.).