My name is József Szücs.

 

I was born in 1944 in Muzslya, a small town in the Serbian part of Banat, Vojvodina, 6 km from Zrenjanin (old Hungarian name: Nagybecskerek) and live here ever since.

During high school, I started to become interested in electrical engineering.

At that time, there was already the Mužlja Radio Club (founded in 1950), which I immediately joined.

At this time he work was mostly on FM, although there was also a short-wave receiver with callsign YU1GMN.

Along with József Kiss (YU1NFR) I learned the basic techniques of amateur radio.

Back then we have built for the club a real "high-performance" 100 watt short-wave transmitter station with two RL12P35 amplifier tubes.

I remember that physical work took a long time because we did not even had adequate tools.

Then I worked a lot with Józsefs personal callsign on the 2 m amateur band.

In the early days we had to plug in the antenna each time between receiving and sending, because there was no antenna switching relay.

The station has worked with quartz-oscillators and for receiving one had to listen to the entire 2-meter amateur radio band.

The stations then could not send and receive on the same frequency.

At the next opportunity I have obtained the operator license, continued learning, passed a couple of exams and finally beeing granted a license to operate my own station.

My first call sign was YU1NWO and I started with a „home made construction“.

Since beeing holder of A license I bought myself a Yaesu FT-200 transceiver and got more and more busy myself with short-wave.

By finally holding the A-class licence, it was possible to change the suffix in the callsign on 2 points. Since then I am using my callsign YU7NW.

In the 1990s, the Yaesu FT-200 was replaced by a Yaesu FT-101ZD transceiver, which I was able to work with not just on the traditional five HF bands, but on the WARC bands.

I welded a 14 m high antenna mast from iron pipes, whereupon a HyGain TH3MK3 antenna was mounted on a HAM-IV rotator.

With this directional antenna one could work on three bands.

In the meantime I received and registered 335 countries following the DXCC rules.

The technical developments in ham radio always was a matter of interest to me. The knowledge and the technical expertise have always been, as far as possible, implemented in my work.

The "Packet Radio" network has been the predecessor of today's internet network, with the difference that the ham radio operators have had connected the radio station to the computer to communicate with the world via aether.

With the YAESU FT-101ZD station I switched to the digital era.

In the very beginning I worked with RTTY (Radioteletype) and SSTV (picture transmissing method).

At that time „DOS“ was the common computer operating system.

The logbook was managed by special software on the computer, duplicates could quite easily be identified and filtered out.

My first computer I have assembled with my own hands after the instructions published in the journal "Galaksija".

The memory was incredibly small with 5 kB, to visualize a black and white TV device was used.

With the aid of this system, in contests duoblets could be automatically identified and eliminated.

Later on the industrially produced Commodore 64 has drawn great popularity among radio amateurs.

With the advent of the first PCs with Windows 95 as operating system, the needs of amateur radio operators changed substantively.

Shortly after teleprintig emulating programs were available, connecting two or more PCs over radio, regardless of alphabet, link system or modulation, was possible . With the help of these programs thousands contacts could be made during contests.

With the advent of "packet radio", the first digital communication mode, the transmitter and receiver had to be connected to PCs via modem to digitise „Voice“ to „Data“.

Nowadays you can buy this altogether as package, but formerly we had to master the manufacturing of PCBs (Printed Circiut Boards) and semiconductors (transistors, diodes and integrated circuits).

In recent years I have been working mainly in PSK (Phase Shift Keying) mode, but can also make contacts in CW, SSB or RTTY when needed.

For the contacts I use the software "MixW2", for maintaining the logbook the "Logger-32".

The contacts I confirm by sending the QSLs via bureau, e-QSL or via website QRZ.com. Everybody sending me a card, will receive a card in return.

In my digital logbook more than 60,000 QSOs are registered up to now.

I am a member of EPC, CDG, NDG, 30-MDG, BDM, DMC and other digital modes clubs.

I collect amateur diplomas, of which I call nearly a thousand pieces my own.

 

In PSK mode (this is a special computer program) I have more than 30.000 different contacts.