I was born in 1951 and started work in 1967 for the GPO whom I remained with for 33 years in it's various guises until I took early retirement from BT in 2000. I was married in 1974 to my dear Mary who passed away on 31st May 2007 after nearly 33 years of a wonderful life together. She is greatly missed.

We lived in a 2 bedroom bungalow which had a 200ft North facing garden. This enabled me to put up a long wire centre fed aerial tuned with a CAPCO SPC3000 ATU enabling operations on all HF Amateur bands. On the roof I had put vertical colinears for 144MHz and 432MHz and for both HF and VHF operations I use a Yaesu FT-747 Transceiver. I also had 50MHz capability using the same rig and a Halo antenna on the roof.

In April 1999 I was voted in for my second period as Hon. Secretary for my local club based in Croydon, Surrey. This is the SRCC (Surrey Radio Contact Club) and I was also the Webmaster for it's website.

My late wife, Mary, was diagnosed with MS in 1978, but this did not stopped us to go travelling and in the last 10 years we had visited Australia four times. On two of the trips I took out a VK licence, namely VK6BQG and did some operating with a dual band VHF handheld. Our last trip down under was in 2001 when we also visited New Zealand

After taking early retirement form BT in 2000, I spent the next 2 years with Interoute Telecommunications. I am now self-employed as a Computer Consultant looking after small business computer systems and also repairing/advising on home PC's. A few years ago I joined the RadioFairs partnership which organises the highly successful West London Radio and Electronics shows held twice annually at Kempton Park. Next show is being held on Sunday 17th April 2011.

In July 2007 I took the opportunity to fulfil a lifelong ambition to travel on the Swiss Railways and took a holiday with Great Rail Journeys on their Glacier Express tour. It changed my life and I am now a Tour Manager with them and took out 6-tours in 2008, 5-tours in 2009 including one in Scotland over Christmas, and 7-tours in 2010. visiting a wide range of Swiss destinations and also Vienna, Salzburg, Koln, Paris, Budapest, Bratislava, Torquay, Falmouth, Edinburgh, Inverness, and Oban. Some of the tours have been cruises, one on the Danube, one on the Soane/Rhone, and one on the Rhine; along with Glacier Expresses, Golden Panoramic, Jungfraujoch, The Sound of Music and Oberammergau.

In late 2007 I met my girl friend Caroline who introduced me to camping and the 3-Choirs festival. In late 2008 we treated ourselves to a Motor Caravan and have had many holidays/breaks away in it since then. In late August 2009 we moved in together in North Tonbridge and on 29th Dec 2010 we were married in Tonbridge Methodist Church. This new life meant I had less time available to do the SRCC Secretary role justice and in late 2010 I resigned from the post though have remained on the Committee.

More info and photos in now contained on Facebook.

73

Ray G4FFY 

7th April 2011