Welcome

A QSL card from my collection

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And I'm sure you have a lot of questions while this page loads (hope quickly): so I'm going to try to answer some of them:

• Who is IK5PWC?
  My name is Luca Civinini, class 1974 and hamradio since 1990 when I was 16 (16 years old is the minimum age in Italy to own a callsign). At the present I live in the countryside near the city of Pistoia, in Tuscany (World Wide locator is JN53LV), but in the past I used to live in the city of Prato always in an apartament building, where an hamradio cannot install something good for his job. Usually, lot of people like to live in country, but for an OM this is even more special: little QRM (and QRN), more spaces for your antennas, less people that can blame you when you put some pieces of aluminium on the roof. Of course, after having installed your antennas (specially if you like HF), all other folks will refer to you as "the strange person who come from the city", but this is a price you can afford....
  Other informations can be found surfing this site...
• Who are these strange animals called Ham?
  Well, if you get here you should know the answer. If you don't know anything regarding this wonderfull world, I suggest you to visit www.arrl.org: they can explain better than me what is Ham radio.
• Why does an hamradio need an Internet site?
  This is a beautiful question! Actually, an hamradio should use the "wireless" radio to get in touch with others and Internet is a really different way since it's a "wired" based communication media. (althought I'd like to remember that hams gave a big contribution to the TCP/IP protocol suite used on the Internet - have a look on the KA9Q Karn's algorithm regarding the TCP segment's retransmit timer)
  A first and simple answer to this question is that nowadays everyone (event the fast food) has its own presence in the Cyberspace. As an technology enthusiastic (like every ham radio should be), I felt the need to create my little website and be known in the "net of the nets", since my work (and my second passion) is related to computer networks.
  Moreover, after contacting some other on radio, I'd like to search his/her Internet site and know a little bit more about the man/woman behind a simple ham call: I like to see that in this beautiful world of radio there is any kind of people, from the farmer to the king. So, if I like to surf other's Internet pages, while not creating mines for other hams?

IMPORTANT ADVICE! As you should already noticed, this site differs from others since it's quite simple without lot of beautiful graphics.. And probably you'll find awful my way of writing (specially in English which is not my mother toungue). Please forgive me for this but writing and painting are not my strength. If you cannot bear, just a little VFO turn (pardon, a little type on the keyboard) and you'll find lot of better stations to surf.

Have a nice surfing de Luca IK5PWC