About

About Mark Haworth

For those familiar with amateur radio, my callsigns are G4EID in the UK and KM8H in the US. I’ve kept a blog here, on and off, since 2005.

The thread running through all of it is the old amateur-radio definition of the hobby: self-training, intercommunication and technical investigations, carried out with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest. In plainer words: I follow my curiosity, I’m usually learning something, and if any of it is useful to someone else, that’s a bonus rather than the point.

What I get up to

It looks like a random collection, and it is. What holds it together isn’t the subjects but two habits: curiosity, and a love of the technology usually sitting in the middle of it. IT and networking are a standing interest in their own right, radio-related or not. It sorts, more or less, into four.

On the air

Radio took hold early and never quite let go. As a boy I was fascinated by shortwave: the idea that a voice could arrive from the other side of the world. The electronics bug followed close behind, thanks to a Philips “Electronic Engineering” kit and its project C2, a medium-wave radio I built myself. I was first licensed in 1976 as G4EID, the callsign I still hold.

Computing arrived almost in step. The first single-board machines appeared, and a Commodore PET (all 8K of it) set the other half of a lifelong habit running: radio and computers, side by side, ever since. That thread carried into work. I graduated from the University of Liverpool in 1980 with an honours degree in Electronic Engineering and joined a telecommunications company. Allowing for the takeovers and mergers along the way, and a two-year spell at Royal Ordnance, I’m broadly still there.

These days I mostly experiment and listen rather than reach for a mic or a morse key. The equipment has changed beyond recognition, but the pull is exactly the same: an antenna pointed at the world, and the pleasure of seeing what turns up. HF propagation is the current preoccupation, with a steady run of other projects always on the go. The propagation dashboard grew out of all this.

Under the sky

This one came first of all, a little ahead of the radio. It began with a pair of old binoculars and a cheap Charles Frank refractor that arrived one Christmas. What I soon found was that the night sky asks for clear weather and late hours, and when those were in short supply the radio, which asked for neither, quietly took the lead. I read my way through most of the astronomy shelf at the library all the same, even if I never had the gear for anything serious. I can still pick out most of the larger constellations, which is the part that stays with you.

The hobby then lapsed for a long while, give or take a brief look into whether radio astronomy might be within reach (not much came of it). What never lapsed was the interest in space itself. I was lucky to be alive and old enough to watch the moon landings, and the Space Shuttle missions after them, and I’ve followed space exploration ever since, crewed and uncrewed alike.

Over the years I dabbled in some basic astrophotography with a DSLR. More recently I’ve come back to it properly, thanks to a Dwarf Mini smart scope whose power and capability frankly astonish me. The slow business of bringing back a decent photograph of something very far away turns out to be every bit as satisfying as I’d hoped.

When I can, I take it all up to our caravan in the Arnside and Silverdale AONB, where the skies are genuinely dark and, as a happy bonus for the radio, the noise falls away too. It’s a spot I’m always itching to get back to, and a piece on it may well follow.

On the ground

A long-standing interest in archaeology and what’s underfoot. I first got involved with Time Team in July 2011, starting with a chance visit, and my role has grown steadily in the years since, including all of their Dig Village excavations at Dunster in Somerset. These days I look after the comms, networking and IT infrastructure on their digs.

The technical side is only part of it, though. The people are remarkable as individuals, but it is how they work as a team that stays with me: everyone pulls for everyone else, and nobody is left to struggle. Several have become firm friends, the kind you keep. A proper write-up may follow.

And, more simply, getting out on the ground itself: walking, running, and travel when I can. I have a particular fascination for hill forts, castles, stone circles, and lighthouses, and half the pleasure of a walk is having one of them to aim for.

I tend to record it as I go. Filming with cameras and a drone, and stills photography, are interests in their own right, and a good excuse to see a familiar place from an unfamiliar angle.

Off the clock

The football comes in two halves. You should always support your local side, so I have followed Southport FC on and off down the years, and was lucky enough to be there when they went up from the old Fourth Division to the Third. Their drop out of the League was a sad day, and I would love to see them back where they belong. The other half is Liverpool FC, supported since my earliest years and, if I am honest, less a hobby than a religion. I get to Anfield only occasionally now, but a supporter is a supporter for life.

I played a fair amount of competitive golf in my younger days. The single-figure handicap I was chasing never quite arrived, and these days I just play socially, every once in a while.

Studying for my Radio Amateur’s Exam in the 1970s taught me a lasting lesson about what does and does not belong on the air: religion, politics and profanity were strictly off limits. It is a courtesy I rather wish more of the world still observed. For the record, though, I am a fully practising atheist, and politically hard to pin down: some of what I believe sits happily on the centre right, some of it just as happily on the centre left. What that makes me, I genuinely have no idea.

I was an early and willing user of social media, but its tone and divisiveness have worn me down, and you will no longer find me on the usual platforms. I have kept a foot in two quieter rooms instead: Mastodon, as @MarkRHaworth@mastodon.online, for the slower conversations, and Bluesky, as @markhaworth.uk, for the louder public square. Lately I find myself drifting back towards Mastodon, which still feels closest to the early, friendlier internet.

And when the day is done, I will take the odd gin and tonic or a good glass of wine, but my real loyalty is to a well-kept pint of real ale. Once a month or so there’s a beer night with a good friend, where we chew over the technical topics of the day and put the crazy world to rights.

This site is a relaunch of the old WordPress blog, Broadsword Calling Danny Boy. That old site stays online, but only as a signpost back to here; nothing further will be posted on it.