G0CKV Olof Lundberg

Team: Western Europe 4 (Team Leader)

Country: Great Britain

Age: 70

Occupation: International Telecom/Satellite Industry, Retired

I got into radio as a young boy in the 1950s through SWL, enjoying the fabulous sunspot maxima in the late 1950s. My first business venture was selling crystal radios to school buddies for illicit classroom listening to the Summer Olympics in Melbourne. I listened to the first Sputnik on a homebuilt receiver. I became seriously hooked on radio listening to the distress traffic as a Swedish fishing vessel was lost in the North Sea one stormy November night. I was licensed January 1960 as SM6CKV and occasionally contested in the 1960s as SM6CKV, SK6AB. I worked in bleeding-edge telecoms and aerospace, moving to England in 1979/80. Essentially off-the-air for 40 years while QRL with family and career, I continued to build pretty good radios at work. Since retirement I am slowly getting back into the hobby from a suburban London wet-string QTH and from around the world with friends. Beside contests, I enjoy an occasional rag chewing, but I spend most of my radio time with the technology — that is, back where I started, a boy and his radio toys.

I am married to Elisabeth and we have four children: Maria, Stefan, Christina and Anna, and four grandchildren so far.

WRTC will be fun! What an honour and surprise to be able to meet and compete with the elite and to make new friends who share passion for our hobby. And then a bonus: the ARRL Centennial. The WRTC event will also coincide with the 45-year anniversary of my first trip to the US – to Maynard, MA, just around the corner from WRTC.