Hi Folks, my name is Tony. I am a retired, married, bus-pass holder and have been licensed as a radio amateur since 1984. I worked in various locations around the country during a 33 year career in the employ of Her Majesty's Civil Service. From the age of 17 I practised martial arts including Karate, Aikido, Judo, Atemi-Jutsu & Ju-jitsu. I settled on Ju-Jitsu as my preferred martial art and attained the grade of 4th Dan within the Jikishin Association. In about 1997 I decided that a move from Kent to Lincolnshire was the right time to retire from the path of teaching and training. Now, in 2021 I moved house once more. This time from the Forest of Dean, where we had a home for 10 years, to a small Somerset village near Bridgwater in Somerset.
I am now back on  the air from my new radio shack but still have some work on antennas to establish all the bands I had previously.
A Maldol HVU-8 has been re fitted and I have already

installed a tri-bander for 6mtrs, 2mtrs & 70cms and have it connected to my Yaesu FT8800 (dual band FM mobile) for local and repeater use. The Yaesu FT847 is in place giving me coverage from 3.5Mhz to 440Mhz. The choice of antenna for HF means I will have had to compromise a bit as I have only installed a couple of roof poles at our new home. A USB Signal Link gives me access to RTTY, PSK31, Slowscan TV and other data modes via my laptop and a nice desktop microphone to suit the FT847 tidies the station layout a bit.
I sometimes operate Echolink, and I have recently installed the 'Droidstar' app on my phone which gives me access to DMR/YSF etc and the Brandmeister network.
I have recently joined a local radio club at Burnham on Sea and have been made very welcome. I have also decided I needed another hobby so I have purchased the required equipment to do some woodturning.