I am Gayle, a 75 year old and I live in Perth, WA. I was into CB radio long ago when the channels were crowded and there were many CB club social activities going on in Perth. I moved on to amateur radio as VK6-PGR. I gained my DX-CC but eventually lost all interest in ham radio, especially as many of my friends became Silent Keys.

I am becoming interested in the possibilities of Freeband. Although there were other female ham operators, most hams are guys and it is a very blokey hobby. The guys just do not want to natter, unlike on 27MHz! In this respect, going back to CB does not seem such a 'backward' move, if I may be forgiven for that term.

My Ham radio equipment included:

Kenwood R-2000 Communications Receiver
Yaesu FT-GXII HF Xcvr
Yaesu FT-101ZD HF Xcvr (with the 10db gain Yagi, this put out 900W on 11m!;
plus various ATUs, desk mics, frequency counters, test equipment, etc.

Currently I have:

Icom IC-R2 0.495MHz - 1.310GHz Communication Receiver
Degen DE1103 Communications Receiver
Dragon SS48H 10-11m Xcvr

Antennas - Sky Band 25-1300MHz Discone antenna; Inverted-V half-wave antenna for 10-11m

- Gayle
43-VH6-XYL