Personal
From the page banner you will have guessed that my Amateur Radio callsign is G0POY, I've held the class A call since 1991, previously I was first licensed as a class B callsign G8POY, which I obtained in 1978. (41+ years ago - ) My main radio interests are Slow Scan Television (SSTV), Radio Teletype (RTTY), Various data modes, and Rag-Chewing.
My main dislikes, the word "Ham" which people always associate with the (thankfully) late Tony Hancock, who was one of the most over-rated non-comics ever to have lived. I have an equally strong dislike of the way some people and the media continuously run down people involved in engineering and the sciences, the word 'techie' is also high up on my hate list.
It's probably easy to see that I am an engineer, a real engineer that is. I trained in the engineering industry (electronics) and served a formal apprenticeship, which in my opinion is one of the best forms of training that you can get. Sadly this system seems to be very much in a decline. I studied via day-release and evening classes, and I've got a couple of dozen certificates from C&G, HTC, TEC, BTEC, HNC (or whatever they call it today) to prove it.
I served my apprenticeship in the marine navigation industry (Kelvin Hughes), then I spent a few years in the Designs Department of the BBC. I followed that with a long stint working for the Metropolitan Police, ending up as their Datacomms Manager. I was 'poached' from that post by a comms. company and I ended up managing a data network for a newspaper in Docklands. I got out of that after a year.
I then worked supporting a large market data network. In other words I've had some big expensive toys to play with again! Ending up as the UK Data manager.
After that I then moved to a small web hosting company, where I looked after quite a few servers hosting all manner of websites. providing first line support as well as many other functions.
That role has now come to an end, and I am now winding down to retirement!
I have quite a few interests, radio, electronics, computing, d.i.y. astronomy, and reading (mainly SF). You can read about some of these on the pages of this web site.
73's for now
Andy
