Actually I was born in Rome and I lived there until I was 30.
Then - about 25 years ago - I moved here.

As many of us, I began to be involved with radios during the late 70's because of that CB thing.
I soon discovered SSB, DXing and the chance to talk to people in other part of the world. I became a member of theAlfa Tango DX club (1AT750) and of many other DX club in Europe, like the Voice of Scotland (VS240) among the others.

My rig in that period was an INTEK ssb 801 with a Skylab antenna and an amplified Astatic 575 M6 mic: 12 watts in SSB (together with an epic propagation on the 11 meters band, never to be seen again) were enought to cover entire Europe (with the obvious exception of countries behind the Iron Courtain).

During the early 80s I started to be interested in computers (Sinclair ZX81 means nothing to you, I guess) and after some years I lost my interest in CB while I became a computer tech, a programmer, a system and network administrator and finally an IT manager.

The story went this way until 2017, when I stumble on a very cheap VHF/UHF unit on Amazon: the (in)famousBaofeng UV5R.
A couple of 10€ bills and the thing was in my hand. Originally bought as a safety device for mountain hikings, it shortly became the sparkle that turned on the fire again: on November 2017 I passed the licensing exam to became an OM and here I am again, 35 years older, but with the same spirit!

Thank you for reading and all the best.
73s de IU2KDZ