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Colin J. Thomas, G3PSM
I first became interested in Amateur Radio in 1956, soon after joining the Royal Air Force as an Administrative Apprentice. After some months I changed trades and became a Boy Entrant Telegraphist, joining the Radio Society of Great Britain in 1958 and was allocated the listener number of BRS (British Receiving Station) 22249. After initial trade training the next two years was spent in listening on the HF bands, and whilst based in Cyprus in 1960 received my first callsign of ZC4CT.
During this tour the Republic of Cyprus came into being and my callsign became 5B4CT. Later however, stations based in the Sovereign Base Areas reverted to the ZC4 prefix, a situation that remains to this day.
Whilst in Cyprus I was also issued with the old Persian Gulf area callsigns of MP4BDK (Bahrain), MP4MAL (Muscat), MP4QAU (Qatar) and MP4TAP (Trucial Oman), as well as VS9ACT (Aden). Activity in the Persian Gulf however was restricted due to political unrest in the region. Efforts to obtain callsigns in Jordan and Turkey during this period were unsuccessful.
Activity also took place from RAF club stations in Libya (5A3), Kenya (VQ4) and the Maldives (VS9MB).
My UK callsign of GW3PSM was issued in 1961 but the GW prefix saw little usage in the coming years.
Between 1964 and 1968 I was active as DL2CT from Butzweilerhof near Cologne, and then as DL5YN from Gatow in the then divided city of Berlin. However activities such as sailing and drinking took precedence over amateur radio during this time.
My last overseas tour with the R.A.F. took me to Gibraltar where a three month detachment stretched to seven months. The process of obtaining a licence was interesting as I had to find my way to an office located in the basement of the Post Office where a very pleasant elderly gentleman examined my UK licence and opened an old exercise book to issue the next callsign in order. When I requested ZB2CT he studied the spaces left on the page and stated that was not possible as it meant having to start a new page and he hadn't yet drawn the columns on the new page. Thus I was issued and with and became active as ZB2BS from the ZB2A club station premises. It was in Gibraltar that I met my wife to be, Gwen, who now holds the callsign G4JYL and who was then a communications WREN working in the depths of "the Rock".
In 1970 the realisation of having to work for a living came as something of a shock to the system, and having first lived in Lincolnshire then Sheffield we eventually moved up to Leeds in the early '70s. A further change of occupation took me back to the communications industry and I joined South Midlands Communications Limited in 1977 and retired from there in August 2005.
Amateur radio has continued to be a major part of my life and over the years I have served as a council member of the Radio Society of Great Britain between 1976 and 1980, as well as serving as Chairman of the H.F. Committee over the past few years. More recently I was re-elected to the RSGB Board and appointed as Spectrum Director.
I attended the 2003 World Radio Conference in Geneva as part of the United Kingdom delegation, representing the interests of UK radio amateurs. In November 2003 I was appointed Chairman of the new Spectrum Forum and co-opted onto the RSGB Board as part of the ongoing restructuring of the RSGB and in December 2004 was formally elected as a Board member.
In March 2005 I was co-opted as IARU Region 1 HF Committee Chairman and this position was confirmed during the October 2005 meeting of IARU Region 1 Member Societies in Davos, Switzerland.
More recently I represented the RSGB at the IARU Region III Conference in Bangalore, India during August 2006 and we were made very welcome by the local radio amateurs.
The story continues
Updated: 28th September 2006.
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