After doing a lot of BCL and SWL from mid eighties, I obtained a temporary and limited amateur license at the beginning of 1993.
Immediately after I passed also the CW examination and obtained a full licence at the end of November 1993. A few days after I bought a
Kenwood TS-45OS-AT and began transmitting on the HF bands. This radio was used until April 2013 and has been displaced then
to a secondary location. It is still in use during summer months.
Over the years I experimented mainly building wire antennas (never bought a single antenna, for fixed HF work, nor a beam),
good enough to let me get the WAC Phone and several DXCC awards (mixed, phone, cw, digital, 5band and 7 HF bands, so far).
I also like very much the digital modes: when I got the limited license the first QSO was on 2m band, in packet mode (with a
portable, a wire dipole on the balcony and an AEA tnc). I am currently active mainly in FT8, but also in RTTY, PSK31, JT65A
and many other digital modes, if I meet someone using them...
About CW, I used it carefully for some years, but I was never so fast, no more that about 20 wpm. Currently I am out of exercise
and in contests or dx sometimes I use some software to help me decode the faster cw, although I always transmit with by
Bencher paddle.
SSB mode was the more used for many years and I like the dx contact as well as chatting in Italian, French and English (languages
I know quite well) or even in Spanish or Portuguese (that I know tentatively only). Nowadays it is quite common to see a totally
dead band in SSB, while you find a lot of statios in FT8...
Current setup for HF is: Kenwood TS-590S, SPE Expert 1.3K FA, an OCFD about 40 m long and an inverted L for the 160 m band,
which is set too low to work well for dx.
For 6m band I can use the Kenwood or an Icom 706 MkIIg, currently with the OCFD.
For 2m and 70cm bands I have no antenna at the moment, but the OCFD resonates well enough to use local repeaters.
For /P operation I use the Icom rig, with a vertical wire antenna (about 9 m long) on a tripod, an automatic tuner and a car battery
to supply power. By the way I have some handheld radios for FM, DSTAR and DMR. No more /M activity for now, not to make holes on my new car :)