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June 13, 2010:
Revised: v2.0
An Introduction to Andrew ZL2PD
Some information about the person behind this
website, if anyone is even remotely interested!
Like many, I built my first transceiver. It was a 2m (144 MHz) AM transceiver. Back in the early 1970's, AM on VHF bands was very popular and that technology, although considered antiquated now, is still a relatively efficient spectrum modulation method, especially for VHF bands.
Within a few years, and with a move to another city, I passed the amateur radio morse test, and received the upgraded callsign - ZL1AQW. Those were the years I finished school, and went on to graduate from university with a degree in electrical engineering. That led to another change of city, where I received my current callsign, ZL2PD. That's the callsign I've held to this day.
Electronics is a great hobby. It's one I was also fortunate enough to turn this hobby into a professional electrical engineering career. After graduating from university, I worked for the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry of Transport, a New Zealand government department. It was excellent experience, with work including interference analysis on air-sea rescue boats to the design and building of extensive high power HF transmitter/receiver systems for Air to Ground communications, and to support long distance weather facsimile ("fax") HF transmission systems.
After seven years in that job, I moved on to work on contract in Fiji, an island group in the middle of the Pacific, doing a variety of HF, VHF and UHF projects, and a bit of ham radio in my spare time. A few years (and a military coup) later, I returned to New Zealand to work for a mobile radio manufacturer for some years.
With my promotion to the head of the Systems Division of that company, I led the design team responsible for building many hundreds of radio and control systems across the world. Following that job, I went on to work for a US-based multi-national network operator, designing and launching a number of large mobile radio networks all around the world.
This led to a lengthy period as an independent telecommunications consulting engineer. In that role, I spent much of my time travelling, all over the world, helping to design, build and operate a variety of new telecommunications networks.
Most of these are wireless networks. I've been involved in the development now of over thirty new fixed and wireless networks rnaging from W-CDMA and cdma2000 (3G), GSM and cdmaOne (2G) cellular networks, fixed WiMAX and mobile broadband wireless systems, TETRA and MPT1327 trunking systems, and a whole bunch of others.
I am not very active on the ham bands these days. Part of the reason can be blamed on my continued extensive travels. Since I prefer operating on the HF bands, it's not so always easy to take ham transceivers to some of the countries where I work and live for lengthy periods. But I do spend time working on a project or two, writing software, or working on some hardware designs.
When I am home, I enjoy spending time in my workshop, designing and building all sorts of electronics equipment. Most of the focus is on things related to amateur radio, but some circuits are built for use on my model railway, or for my family.
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