The MØTZO Blog

Personal Details

Or, how did I get into Amateur Radio?

When I was about 16, I was given an offer by a relative that if I got a Amateur Radio Licence I would be given a Radio. At the time I was not very interested in radio and the offer went on the back burner for a while, a long while.

Then came Christmas 2003 (Age then 27). In a reversal I was given an Icom IC-E90 (Handheld) radio and was told if I wanted to use it I would have to get an Amateur Radio Licence.

* Not Currently Valid

Member of various clubs including:-
Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB)
Sutton and Cheam Radio Society (SCRS) webmaster
Whitton Amateur Radio Group (WARG) webmaster
Isle of Wight Radio Society (IWRS) associate member

I like to work on 2m and 70cm. I can sometimes be found on eQSO & EchoLink (node #179744 for MØTZO). All logged are contacts uploaded to eQSL.cc and the ARRL LogBook of The World (LoTW).

Why TZO???

To be honest through a mixup (as always with me), but I like it now.

Why, what happened?

The calls I would have most wanted (with my initials for example) had gone. So then I wanted a call that could spell a word using the 3 as an E (MExxx). Obvious ones like M3TRO (metro), M3TER (meter), M3DIC (medic), etc had all gone.

Then I remembered about a restaurant in London which had a name like Metzo. A call to the Radio Licence Centre (RLC) and found M3TZO was available. I then discovered a slight mistake in my spelling of the name of the restuarant which was actaully METTO.

Another call to the RLC and oh no M3TTO had gone. I decided that as I had already found a call that was available, I would go back to that.