D.O.B:  02 April 1965

First Licensed: June 1987

Chris is a born and bred Yorkshire man, hailing from Conisbrough, a mining village close to the town of Doncaster. He is proud of his roots and even though he has been living away from the area for over 10 years he still has the distinctive Yorkshire accent.

He left school at 16 and started his working life as a stone mason, working on places like York Minster, Beverly Minster and Selby Abbey to name just a few historic buildings his work helped restore. He then went into the car trade selling cars and finance for cars, delivering parcels for UPS and TNT, until settling into his current position in a logistic support role. He has been married and now divorced for a number of years he enjoys the life of a bachelor.

Chris’s interest in radio started when his parents bought him a “Ghetto Blaster” radio cassette with the shortwave broadcast bands on it. He would spend evenings in his room listening to the world wide broadcast stations, dreaming of where the signals came from. Then in 1977 when the film Convoy hit the screens and one of his friends had a CB in his car he got on the air. There then followed years of 11 meter DXing and and dxing on the UK FM CB band, Chris was never happy just to speak to his friends down the road.

At school he became friends with the son of Hans Hindle, G3WBG, who introduced him to Amateur radio and Chris then got the bug for listening to the ham bands, even buying a Trio JR310 receiver. And with a piece of wire down his parent’s garden his adventures in amateur radio began.

At this time he also had a 4 element beam for 11M and was a member of various 11M DX and QSL clubs, even being the England rep for the Sandcastle DX and QSL club of Washington state USA. He is an avid collector of QSL cards and still likes to receive them and QSL’s every contact as he knows that it could be the first one for a new operator and their first steps to gaining the coveted DXCC honour roll place.

In 1987 he took what was then the RAE and gained his amateur radio class B ticket (Only VHF and UHF above 144 MHz), but with his interest on HF he struggled with Morse code so never took the required 12wpm test. When he got married his radio activities took a back burner and he just played on 2M FM chatting locally with his friends which led to him losing the passion.

Then in 2003 he picked up a copy of Practical Wireless where it was announcing the abolition of the CW requirement and All Class B licensees would be allowed HF privileges he got back on the radio.

Now with more than 255 DXCC Entities worked and over 240 confirmed he has found his home in the hobby. He now enjoys using digital modes (RTTY) and CW, sending using his computer and he receives his own call at up to 40 words per minute. Since 2004 he has had first place England in the CQWW Phone contests on 10M and in other contests had band winning scores, again finishing number 1 England. He joined the GB0SH team for the first time in 2006 and has since become great friends with all the other members. He is usually one of the first names down on the list to join in with any of the clubs activities, and even activates the club contest call from his home in the RTTY legs of the CQWW contest and CQ WPX contest, gaining the clubs first certificate as No 1 England in the 2008 CQWPX RTTY contest on 40M using M9W.