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Well, what a year 2011 turned out to be! As I write this it will be six months since I learned that I have incurable brain cancer.

Let me tell you, nothing prepares you for the shock of being told you have a terminal illness. One day I was a reasonably fit 58-year-old who had never been seriously ill in my life, enjoyed long walks in the outdoors, didn’t eat junk food, never smoked and drank only in moderation. I fully expected to live until my 80s – the average expectancy of people in Britain.

A week later and our world had been turned upside down. Within hours of being referred to hospital after complaining of a persistent slight headache and fuzzy vision I had been give a CT scan and told that there was something in my brain that shouldn’t be there, something that might be a tumour.

Then I was told that whatever it was, I would need brain surgery, and asked to sign a form to show it had been explained to me that I might never recover from the operation, I might be left in a coma, or unable to speak or recognize my wife. The thought of brain surgery was scary but with no time to even think about alternatives I signed. A couple of hours after that and I was being whisked by ambulance across the breadth of the country in the middle of the night to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. There, they made an MRI scan and then performed the brain surgery to remove as much as they could of the tumour without harming normal brain function.

A few days later I was recovering in hospital from the operation, feeling better by the day and fully expecting that I would be home soon and in a few weeks life would get back to normal. Then a grave-faced hospital registrar accompanied by a nurse drew the curtains round my bed, sat down and informed us that the material taken from my brain had been analyzed. It was a brain tumour, and not just any old brain tumour but the worst sort possible (glioblastoma multiforme grade 4) that only one in 40,000 people are unlucky enough to get. I’d hit the brain tumour jackpot. The prognosis was from a few months to  a year, but I would receive treatment to “prolong quality of life as far as possible.”

The news was like being punched in the stomach. Nothing in our life would ever be the same from that moment on. And Olga and I, stunned and numb, were left to find our way home to Cockermouth from Newcastle.

Since then, we have been through a whole gamut of emotions. At first, I felt that nothing I did before I knew I had a tumour mattered as much as making the best of whatever time was left to myself and Olga. In that frame of mind I felt that ham radio was a fairly pointless activity and posted in this blog what I thought would be The Final Over.

But I soon came to realize that life wasn’t over yet. Because of the need for rest and treatment, Olga and I couldn’t just take ourselves off on a world cruise anyway. I needed to be available to see the doctors and go to the hospital. So I regained my interest in my hobby and was soon very thankful for it as gave me something to do during the weeks spent at home, something that took my mind off the darker thoughts I often had.

Learning that I had a brain tumour and that my life was likely to be shorter than I had hitherto expected has made me a different person. I now live from day to day and try to be grateful for whatever each day brings me. I used to be the archetypal “grumpy old man” ranting about the government or other people. I haven’t altered my opinions about bankers, politicians and the EU but now I don’t waste precious time grumbling about things I can’t change.

After I began writing my brain tumour diary one or two people pointed out that it wasn’t just me, we are all mortal and we all die eventually. Some people go off to work and die in car accidents or suddenly drop dead of a heart attack giving their loved ones no opportunity even to say goodbye to them.  Others die after long and painful illnesses with months in hospital. We don’t know for how long the treatment will keep my tumour at bay. At the moment I’m feeling no pain, just frustration sometimes at not being able to do things I could when I was fit. But I’m at home with my wife and expecting that I will eventually get back to something more akin to normal.

The realization that time is precious means that Olga and I will do things that we otherwise would probably never have got around to. I am lucky that I have been able to give up work and devote my energy exclusively to recovery and recreation. We are both savers not borrowers so we are fortunate not to have money worries – well, not apart from the possibility of a world economic collapse making all of our savings worthless! Being diagnosed with a terminal illness has even allowed me to fulfil a goal I thought I never would – that of retiring before I was 60. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Most of all, I am so fortunate to be married to my wife and soulmate Olga. She has never once complained about the stresses and strains of suddenly finding her husband has brain cancer. She is always there for me, making sure I take all the right pills at the right time and helping me keep my strength up with lots of tasty home-cooked food, fruit and vegetables.

My situation has been harder for Olga to bear than for me. I have always had a bit of a fatalistic view of life – that what will be will be – and a tendency to look for dark humour in a situation. But I only have to imagine how I would feel if the situation was reversed to know how Olga must be feeling. I would be heartbroken to lose her and it won’t be easy for her if she loses me.

For Olga, even more than for myself, I need to beat this tumour. I need to prove the doctors wrong and show that you can survive a glioblastoma. I’m optimistic about it. So my one and only resolution for 2012 is to beat the bugger and still be here in a year’s time to write about all the things we have done despite my having a brain tumour.

Thank you for reading my blog and for all the messages and cards of support sent by many of you. They have all made a difference and helped us both to feel better about the situation. I hope that 2012 will be a great year for you and not spring any nasty surprises like 2011 did for us.

It should have been simple. I needed a basic CW keyer that would allow me to use a paddle with my homebrew QRP / QRPP rigs because my shaky hands make sending Morse with a straight key too difficult at the moment. I also needed to be able to record a message and play it once or repeatedly until I heard someone reply or was spotted on the reverse beacon network.

A couple of years ago I built a DC20B QRP transceiver. I didn’t like it very much and eventually sold it on eBay but I did like the keyer built into it which used an ATTiny13 microcontroller. One day, I thought, I would build a keyer using this chip. I got two of the Atmel chips and Steve Weber KD1JV sent me the hex file so I could program them but I never got around to doing anything more until a couple of days ago.

The simple keyer circuit uses only a handful of components but due to my condition it took a lot longer than it would have done pre-tumour to work out a perf board layout and build it. So you can imagine that I was a bit upset when after all that effort the keyer didn’t work. It responded to the dash key and the function button, but not the dot key. Also the sidetone was very high pitched and the Morse speed was about 100wpm!

Thinking I had made a mistake programming the clock setting in the chip I tried programming the other one. This ended up just the same. Unfortunately with the simple keyer program you have to disable the reset pin that is used by the programmer so you only get one chance to write the code to the EPROM. But as I don’t have the source code and so can’t try modifying it that shouldn’t have been a problem. If I hadn’t sold the DC20B I could have tried the keyer chip from that, but now I am now stuck with no idea what to try next.

I have the code for another keyer that uses a PIC12F509A – the K9 from K1EL’s freeware page. But I’d have to start over with the circuit board as the pinouts of the Atmel and Microchip microcontrollers are not compatible. The functionality of the K1EL keyer program is not what I was after either, so I don’t feel much like trying it at the moment.

I am an entrepreneur (cofounder of 6 companies including Enigma Records, Restless Records, Enigma Digital, Bigger Picture Group and InnovAntennas), former music business executive (president of Rykodisc, SVP/GM of EMI Music’s Astralwerks and Caroline divisions, SVP/GM at Live Nation Artists, plus the aforementioned record labels I cofounded), amateur radio operator (currently callsign AA7XT, former callsigns include NT1Y, AA6TT and KC6EDP), family man (happily married to Christine since 1992, we have a rambunctious 8-year old daughter – are there any other kind? – and assorted pets), triathlete (3-time Ironman finisher) and cycling fanatic, early stage investor in tech companies, and owner of an Earthship house in Glade Park, Colorado.

This Blog will focus on amateur radio, Glade Park, Colorado and Earthship topics.  Amateur radio has been a passion since I started SWL-ing (Short Wave Listening) in 1969 on a Zenith Trans-Oceanic transistor radio and hamming in 1970 when I passed the novice license exam, and Earthships, well, because we live in one and sustainable living is an interesting topic.  I will be writing about Glade Park, Colorado – where we moved in 2011 – because it is a fascinating place in so many different ways.

Radio recently became more than a hobby to me when I became a partner in InnovAntennas with company founder Justin Johnson (whose amateur callsign is G0KSC).  InnovAntennas is based in Canvey Island, England and I run the North American office here in Grand Junction, CO.  InnovAntennas designs and manufactures extraordinary high-performance antennas for amateur, military and commercial use from HF up through UHF frequencies.

My perspective on sustainable living will take a different line from much of what I read about sustainable living which tends to have a political undercurrent if not an avowed political stance.  I’m not that political a person to begin with – haven’t occupied much of anything lately except my Aeron chair, the driver’s seat of my diesel GMC Sierra 2500 truck, and my Bianchi road bike seat and I’m in favor of things that work whether from the right or left – and my interest in Earthships stems from (a) general admiration of well-engineered things and (b) affinity for not sending more money to utility companies than I absolutely have to.  If I save the earth a little by living the way I do, well, hey, why not?

Bill

I just saw a tweet from OY3JE containing a link to the IARU Region 1 website noting that the Netherlands will have allocations at 70MHz and 500khz from January 1st 2012.

Personally, I’m particularly pleased with the opportunities at 70MHz, though I suspect I will be lucky to work into the Netherlands with my current 70MHz setup.

See the Region 1 article here

This just in from the Things That Make You Go Hmmm Department: the amateur radio portion of Yaesu splits from Mother Motorola while the land mobile portion stays. This is right on top of an announcement that Yaesu will pursue a digital amateur radio offering based on land mobile technology (i.e., definitely not D-STAR).

The K0KDS blog has a post about the split, so go there for the full story. The ARRL has this news item about the organizational change. Here’s the paper that Yaesu published about their move into digital technology for amateur radio.

73, Bob K0NR

Do you make them?  Are they successful?  Will you make New Year’s resolutions for 2012?  What about resolutions geared specifically towards amateur radio?

If you’ve been listening to the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast for the past few years, you know the January episode features a few suggested New Year’s resolution ideas geared towards the amateur radio hobby.  This January will be no different and episode 51 will provide you numerous ideas for your very own New Year’s resolutions.  Of course, I’ll also share some of my own with you and provide a follow-up on how successful I was with my 2011 plans.

Again, amateur radio specific resolutions could be anything from upgrading to a new license class, trying a new mode, learning CW, volunteering in your community via ARES, RACES etc. or even something as simple as joining a local amateur radio club.

If you are thinking of specific amateur radio New Year’s resolutions of your own, please email me with your idea and how you plan to accomplish it.  I’ll read some of the suggestions during episode 51.

Until next time,

73 de KD0BIK