My history in Amateur Radio:

Halfway In the 70's I started with CB, who didn't?
Later on I 'discovered' that there is more to radio than just babbeling around the block but that needed a real licence, and CB was illegal at the time too.
So after just a few months in 1980 I got my first license as PD0JEI, which allowed me to use 6 channels in FM on the 145 Mhz band in 1982 that was expanded to 145.000 to 145.800.
This was not enough of course, so back to the books I went and in 1986 I got my C-license which granted everything above 145 Mhz.
So after getting my CW test out of the way I got 'The Big One' the A-license in 1988 and I started a HF setup at home, with a Sommerkamp 250 and a FD-4 antenna. I did a couple of PACC contests as station helper to Paul, PA3DCO (SK).
Paul did lit my interest in contesting and helped me to get on speed in CW but I never mastered the HSC 25 wpm threshold, so I'm still stuck around 20 wpm
I participated in the DX-pedition contestteam PA6VHF to the Hochkar Mountain in Austria.
In January 1989 I participated in the CQWW 160 Meter contest from the location of PI4UTR with a special made antenna setup and used a FT902 as TX/RTX and a RACAL 17L as receiver for diversity reception.
The antenna was a 18 meter high with a 12 meter diameter wire capacity hat on top and oodles of radials.
Lots of trees around to get that Capacity hat look like a ondulating pancake, but it did work as advertised in the ON4UN Book about Low Band DX.
All in all it resulted in a (UN-official) 2nd place in PA country.
While I like to give points in any contest I used a PAPER LOGBOOK so I could not be bothered with all that fancy computerised stuff, so there won't be any official Logs send in.
My main interst was the 160 meter band, and before 2010 I hardly ever worked beyond the 160m and 80m bands.
In 2010 I put separate dipoles up for 80 40 and 30 up and an inverted L for 160m and 80m with a homebrew T-match.
In 2020 the separate dipoles where replaced by the current setup with a remote antenna switch, remote MFJ-brt tuner and a single ladderline feed to multiple dipoles for the 160,80,40,30 meter bands. A Diamond BB7V vertical which works quite nicely on 40-10 meters.
A nice discovery was that the Diamond V2000 50/144/430 Mhz antenna works with an acceptable SWR on 70 Mhz, (tuneable by the ICOM 7300).

Just for the fun of it : Some cute Awards