My New/Reacquired Interest in Ham Radio#

My early interest in Ham radio began way back when I was a child, watching my dad play around with his CB radio’s and Ham radio’s in his shed back in the 80’s when I was just a kid. I remember being loaded into the car along with my sister and my mum and driven to the top of the local hill to try and get a better signal for his CB or Ham radio, or being dragged along to the local radio club meetings where I’d be fascinated by the various homebrew radio’s and equipment on display and not being allowed to touch anything!

It was fascinating to me and it was certainly one of the things that sparked my interest in electronics and computers, I remember being fascinated by such things as packet radio and RTTY. I still remember my dad hooking up his computer to his radio and sending messages out into the ether. I remember actually learning about the various bands and frequencies, bouncing signals off the ionosphere and the different modes of transmission and reception.

Alas… I never did get around to getting my own license back then, time passed and my interests moved on to other things.

I guess one of the main reasons why I didn’t get into Ham radio back then was that other hobbies and interests eventually took priority, such as computers, programming, bbs’s and of course the internet and it’s many protocols and utilities, all of which were alas far more accessible to me back then than radio was for a young lad who just wanted to tinker with electronics and computers.

It wasn’t until recently (2026) that I thought about getting back into Ham radio again, now that I’m a bit older (not necessarily wiser!) and I am no longer focused on corporate ladder climbing now that I run my own business and I have moved from being a pure software developer back into making things (both software and hardware) for a living.

I’m now in the process of studying for my foundation license and I’m hoping to get on the air soon! I’ll be sure to document my journey here. I may also from time to time post fond memories of my late father and how he inspired my interest in electronics, computers and of course Ham radio.

I run Protoworks (NI) in Northern Ireland, helping small businesses design prototypes and build custom software. If you have a hardware or software idea you’d like to sketch out, feel free to get in touch.