About Me

I live in Launceston, Tasmania, a city of around 68,000 people. I have always had a strong passion for radio and anything technical. Over the years that interest has taken me through several different areas of the radio hobby, each offering its own challenges and learning opportunities.

My radio interests have included:

• UHF CB
• Amateur Radio (Ex VK7FPGB), currently VK7AAL
• Radio Scanning
• Ultralight DXing
• Shortwave Listening

I am currently a licensed amateur radio operator with the callsign VK7AAL, and amateur radio has become my main focus within the hobby. Alongside this, I remain heavily involved in radio scanning and actively searching the VHF and UHF bands for new and interesting users.

One aspect of the hobby that particularly appeals to me is the analytical side. I enjoy the process of observing patterns in radio traffic, identifying unknown users, and working out who or what they might be. Finding a new frequency is often just the beginning, the real challenge is determining how it is used, who operates it, and when it becomes active. This often involves monitoring over long periods, comparing signal behaviour, and cross-referencing information with known systems.

Programming radio scanners is another area I focus on. Modern scanners are extremely capable but also complex, and effective programming is essential to get the best results from them. I spend a lot of time researching frequency allocations, identifying active users in the region, and organising this information into structured scanner programming so that radios are both efficient and practical to use in the real world.

My interest in technology also extends into software development, particularly where it intersects with radio. Rather than relying entirely on existing tools, I often prefer to build my own. I am currently developing a custom database program (RadioFreakDB) to log and organise my radio-related information. This system is being written using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, allowing me to create a flexible tool tailored specifically to how I analyse and track radio activity.

The goal of this project is to create a structured way to record:

• Frequencies
• Identified users
• Signal observations
• Monitoring notes
• Scanner programming data

For me, the real power of technology is not just in using tools that already exist, but in building tools that solve the problems you actually have. Radio monitoring generates a large amount of information, and designing software to organise and analyse that data is a natural extension of the hobby.

In many ways, the technical, investigative, and analytical sides of radio are just as interesting as the listening itself.