I was born in 1961 and I live in the small city, a few kilometers north-west of Cologne / Germany.

In 1978 I started to work for Deutsche Bundespost, a German Federal Authority for postal services and telecommunications. In 1995 the authority was privatized and the telecommunications part became the company Deutsche Telekom AG.

After my apprenticeship I worked as an engineer for maintenance of analogue electromechanical telephone switching systems. In 1990 I changed to the new digital ISDN switching systems as a field operations engineer. A few years later I became a specialist for ISDN switching systems in one of the regional network monitoring centers of Deutsche Telekom.

In 2001 I got a new job as a system administrator for network management systems.

In 2008 I changed to T-Mobile Germany and worked as an incident agent for the Radio Access Network (2G, 3G and 4G).

I was retired in December 2016.

In 1988 one of my colleagues showed me the equipment of the HAM Radion Beacon DB0JK on the Colonius Telecommunication Tower in Cologne. We talked a lot about HAM Radio and he encouraged me to take the HAM Radio exams. I got my license (Class C) for VHF/UHF in 1989. The license is now also valid for HF (Class A).

Since I'm retired, I got time to deploy a HF-Antenna (Diamond WD330S). With my HF-TRX (IC-7300) I work mostly in FT8. But I still have the equipment for VHF (IC-7100 and a sleeve dipole antenna) on air and I have also made some FT8-QSOs on 2 m.

My other hobbies are Computers (bought my first one in 1978), trams and railways, photography, hiking and travelling (I've visited the South West of the USA, North Carolina, Australia (QRV as VK2TCH), and ...).

DOK Z12