9A3A Ivo Pezer
Team: Southeast Europe 3
Country: Croatia
Age: 53
Occupation: Chief Property Management in United Nations Global Service Center
9A3A Ivo Pezer
Forty years of amateur radio activity with 24 years out of home country working for the UN Peace Keeping Operations. This allowed me to be active from the various parts of the world, using over 30 different call signs. Whenever possible, I’ve tried to be QRV in all major HF DX contests, both as a small pistol and as a big gun station, depending where and for how long I’ve stayed. The peak activity was between 1997 and 2002 from Cyprus (C4A – nowadays reactivated by my 5B4 friends), where I built a fully automated SO2R station. My contest activity with many top-box finishes has resulted with the 1996, 2000 and 2002 wild-card invitations as a WRTC competitor (W6Q, S543B and OJ3X). Although my favorite category is SOAB, the most memorable contest was 1999 CQWW CW, when I’ve chosen the single band category to minimize operating time and spend some time with my family and our newborn son Nr. 2, 5B4Martin. It happened to be the world record on my favorite band! I am proud that, back in 1999, after many attempts, I managed to work 160m QSO with N7UA, described in ON4UN’s Low Band DXing 4th edition as “the historic, true 160m long-path QSO”. I am also proud father of three boys, ranging from 5 to 21 years, all with one wife!
To summarize, I can say that I’ve been lucky working for the greatest Organization and being passionate about the greatest hobby of all, ham radio contesting, managing to survive all sort of things including 48 hours contests.
As I was getting wiser (some say older), work commitments prevented me from regular contesting at the high level so I missed WRTC events in Brazil and Russia. I really missed contesting so I decided to attempt to qualify for WRTC with 12 CW contests. The rules change, allowing both team members to operate full time was also an important factor, ensuring ever more fun than in earlier events. I’ve managed to have quite a good average score for quite some time, operating as T70A, 4O3A and 4U1GSC, but at the end did not have 12 full time contests and missed to qualify. As 4O3A was looking for a partner and I’ve gladly accepted his offer. Looking forward to have fun and enjoy the Event.