ES2RR Toivo Hallikivi
Team: Northern Europe 1
Country: Estonia
Age: 49
Occupation: Solution Manager in sales and marketing of cellular network equipment
ES2RR Toivo Hallikivi
Growing up in the outskirts of Tallinn I got involved in ham radio at the age of 15 at the local radio club UK2RDX. My first ever attempt to make a contact was on 15m SSB in summer of 1979 and it turned instantly into a North-American pileup. I ended up working a dozen QSOs instead of one. From that moment on I was hooked. Later that year I entered my first CQWW Contest as part of the multi-op team. Even though I received my first call sign UR2RRR a couple of years later, I had already been ‘spoiled’ with large Yagis and quads. I didn’t feel like using simple wire antennas at home anymore and therefore kept operating mostly from the club station. More than 30 years later nothing has changed in that sense. I still can’t motivate myself to put up a tribander and a few wires when a friendly ham (ES5TV) has a station within just a couple of hours drive and he’s kind enough to let me operate a contest every now and then.
In 1990 I moved to Finland and was virtually QRT until I went on a work assignment to the United States in 1997. Inspired by good friends Mike W9YS, Guy N9XBG and Jim W9IW I got involved in contesting again and operated a few contests from Jim’s QTH. Upon return to Finland in 1998 the OH2U crew kindly took me in and my contesting career continued at Paksalo. Throughout the last decade I’ve had the pleasure of being hosted numerous times in Canary Islands by Pekka, EA8AH.
The birth of our twin sons in 2006 has somewhat limited my contesting activities, especially the operations that involve travelling, but I still try to participate in most of the big ones from ES9C. Some of my most recent guest operations include Radio Arcala, OH8X and the memorable experience of travelling to Azores last year for ARRL Phone at CR2X.
This will be my fourth consecutive WRTC and as always it will be a great pleasure to meet many old friends again. Results-wise I hope to do as well as in 2010, preferably just a little bit better.