My name is Jan Poortman. I grew up in a small town in the eastern part of the Netherlands. The name of that place is Goor. Today Goor is a part of "The Hof van Twente". When I was a young boy, I was already very interested in technics. I tried, together with a friend, to generate electricity with a collection of flower-pots and bycicle-parts. At that moment we were not successful but had a lot of fun. The photo below shows the generator with the two operators, at the left, the late Jan Bunschoten and on the right side it is me. I think, we were about 8 years old.
Some years later I got my first radio, it was a kit, called "Pupil". See the receiver-section of the website.
After this first step in the world of radio's I made a lot of receivers, transmitters, amplifiers and other stuff.
After this first step into the world of radios, I made many receivers, transmitters, amplifiers and other wonderful devices, which did not always do what I expected.
Yes, I was also a pirate on the medium wave and later under the call letters PA0FU, the call of my role model Mr. E.A. Spoor. QSO's were made on amateur bands, which was only "semi-illegal"( I thought). The latter also happened with his transmitter, the T1154M, powered by a power-supply he made.
A picture of my old shack, top-left a homebrew receiver in a WS-19 case. Top right, the first attempts to build a oscilloscope.
Middle left, a TK-28?? Grundig tape-recorder and mid-mid, a part of a T1154 transmitter.
On the table the Jemco-meter.
During this period I assisted the local radiotrader, mister Wim Sanders, very often. I erected TV-antennas on the roofs, repaired radio's and other electronic devices and learned how to handle the customers. A very instructive time. The only problem was that I had no time to do my school-works. This ended with fatal results.
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On this picture, my teacher , Wim Sanders, repairing a TV-set. I was not allowed to fix TV's, it was to dangerous due the high voltages.
I think my age was about 14 years when this picture was made. Repairing a Philips receiver with U-tubes with my "Solon" soldering iron.
After finishing my study, I had to join the army, the Royal Dutch Air Force, I studied Ground-radio and later I became instructor in electronics. A "heavy" but interesting time.
After this service I started
working in Switzerland, in Zürich. The company was called "Albis Werke Zürich"
and it was a doughter of Siemens Germany. We worked together with Siemens
München, were we developed the first computer controlled telephone-exchanges.
So my living-places were Zürich and München. In 1977 I returned to the Netherlands
and started working in Almelo. My job was system-administator of the fully integrated central datasystems.
Since the 1st. of October 2009 I am retired, and that is not too bad.
In 1985 I received my
first radioamateur-license, the callsign was PE1LHJ. Some years later I
was allowed, after another exam, to transmit on a small part of the
shortwavebands, callsign PB0AGZ and after another year I was licensed for
all radio-amateur-radio-frequencies. Callsign PA3ESY. So that stands
for that PA3ESY-name of the site.
This picture was taken after a sunny day or after some glasses of wine or after a combination of these two.
I am married, my wifes name is Marjolein and we have two children, Marieke and Niek. None of them is really interested in my hobby of repairing radiosets and playing with them.
But all of us are quite happy