Carreer
Hans did have a professional carreer in the radioequipment business. He owned his own telecom company for years. Selling, maintaining and repairing communication equipment. Because of this job he knew quite a few people that are also into amateurradio. I noticed that when I was attending a radiorally in the center part of the country, he was often occupied by people that knew him and wanted to talk to him.
Hamradio
Hans was specialized in VHF/UHF communication and especially working satellites. You can read that on his QRZ page. When that got boring he was triggered by reading this blog to try QRP HF portable. He enjoyed going out with the dog, taking his FT-817 and various antennas to experiment and make contacts. He told me that he developed a special interest in tracking weatherballoons last year. His technical knowledge was far beyond mine, but he didn't show that to me. It became clear to me when he repaired an amplifier which I gave to him for free and returned it to me without any costs. He also send me a excellent working 3 band endfed, which I used a lot, just as a present. Various books about amateurradio were also given to me...I'm very grateful for all of it. I know I was not the only one that got free equipment from him. He told me some time, travelling to a radiorally, he provided equipment and help to others that didn't have the money to buy HF equipment for instance. In the last e-mail from Christmas 2020 I got from Hans he told me he was busy building a mcHF QRP HF TRX from M0NKA. Then things went very quiet...
Health
Health was a big issue. Hans was cured from cancer years ago. However after that he got a serious back problem and went through several surgical operations because of hernias. If that wasn't bad enough he became addicted to the medicine that surpressed the pain. He also had a lot of trouble walking because of all this. I understood that lately it went a lot better and he was almost off the addiction. However last year his daughter died from cancer. You can imagine how sad he was. After this happened I didn't have much contact with Hans anymore since he was busy moving house from Duiven to Sliedrecht. We exchanged e-mail occassionally till last Christmas when he told me he was reasonabely allright.
Today I received the funeral card. It really shocked me. From what I read on the card his death was quite sudden and by surprise. May he rest in peace...
My last QSO's with Hans can be found here:
Portable from Borkum Isl. (DL) and Hans on the bicycle from nearby his vacation address.
https://pe4bas.blogspot.com/2018/05/cq-from-dlpe4bas.html
In 2018 via the foxhunt ballon