Fifteen minutes of fame

I got published in a real magazine!

Okay, I didn't get paid for it, but it's still a buzz seeing my name in print, and my photo.

One of my hobbies is amateur radio (or ham radio if you prefer), my callsign is VK4VSP. It's a hobby I share with my younger brother Laurie, callsign VK4VCC.

I haven't been licenced all that long. After I did the licence exam and I was wating for the results I was at a bit of a loose end. I had some radios and all the other gear needed to get on the air, but I couldn't use them until I got the licence.

It was Australia day, I didn't have any uni study to do as the semester hadn't started yet, the lawn didn't need mowing and the vege garden was all planted out and I hadn't started blogging back then. I felt like doing some radio type stuff, so I built a mast out of old curtain rods that we had in the shed.

As I mentioned above, Laurie has an amateur radio licence as well. He was lucky enough to get one of his photos on the cover of Amateur Radio magazine late last year. The photo was of the very first Foundation licencee in this country Amanda VK4FRST (hams don't have surnames, they have callsigns instead).

Anyway, as someone who studied journalism at uni just long enough to know I didn't want to be a journalist, I thought I should be able to get something puplished if I tried hard enough. So, I wrote an article about how I built this mast out of curtain rods.

I got an e-mail from Laurie late last week asking if I'd got my copy of AR magazine and that I should have a look at pages 10 and 11. Well, it was in the post today and just about the whole family knows about it already. My sister-in-law is going out to buy a copy tomorrow.

As I said, it's quite a buzz, seeing your name in print like that. I'm going to bore the tits* off my workmates tomorrow with the article. If you're interested and I'm sure my regular readers are (sorry fame's going to my head) Amateur Radio Magazine, pages ten and eleven in your newsagent's. You don't have to buy it, just have a quick browse. There's even a picture of me in it.

Ok, my next blog will be something a bit more humble, I promise.

Next challenge; to get a cover shot like my little brother, or to get paid for an article.

-------

* I wonder if that word will get me more hits on my blog a la turkey slaps