I got my licence in 1979, when I studied electronics at the university of Aachen (RWTH). One of my colleagues in the electronic class was DF9EA, Helmut. He was also living in the same student apppartment building than me. We got good friends and it happens, that I very often visited him to tune his 2m rig (a IC-211E - very advanced at the time).
Suddenly I got a letter from German PTT, that they reserved the date for the Radio licence examin - I could not believe it, as Helmut my friend has applied for it, on behalf of me, without telling me a word !! Examine? - according to the letter - should be for the highest licence class, including CW - and the date was scheduled for within 3 weeks !

Well, time to start seriously studying the hamradio rules and especially CW. Well - everything went well and I got my first call sign DF8MQ in 1979

My first rig was a Yeasu FT-7 - I still have that radio, was never able to sell my first toy...hi
Very soon I build my first amplifier for shortwave, with the help of Arno, DL9AH. Will never forget to walk with him arround in Dortmund ham-flee market and source the necessart equipment for a kW- amp based on DL9AH design (11x PL-36, Ua=600V, Ug2=220V - power out about 1200W)

I had a nice full-size vertical dipole (20m high) at my parents home in Siegen for 40m which worked great, especially to the west - never forget, when the band became really busy at DX timing, when Canada was allowed to transmit in the European SSB band in 1981 ( ? sorry, don't remember the date exactly...)

After my move to Berlin in 1985, I was an active member of the DF0RR contest group. We were very succesful in these years with rather large wire antennas. I build a 4ele full-size high gain LPDA for 80m and was one of the first working BY1PK on 80m, when they came on the band for the first time... We also had a 4square, 5 ele monoband yagis on 10/15/20m and a 7ele LPDA for 40m fixed to W6. This 40m antenna was the largest beam, I ever used: it had a boom length of almost 70m (!) between the towers. It outperformed our rotatable full-size 3ele Yagi by 10dB in gain, more importantly the F/B and F/side ratio was just phenomenal...?
Probably to compare with a large broadside phased beverage array...
At the early times, Matt (now KC1XX) was member of our group. He was just licensed, when he was the first of the group members to reach KH6XX on 80m over the pole... almost professional from the beginning !

From 1990 to 1994, I was QRT while working in Cologne for Sony Germany and at the same time studying for my MBA - there was just no time for the hobby. Early 1994 I moved to Amsterdam and joined the PI4COM content group - great team, great people, endless motivation.... never forget, when our station was burned down by vandalism and Matt, KC1XX started immediately a fund in the USA to support us building it up again. Well - PI4COM came quickly back, thanks to that great help due to Matt's initiative - Thanks, to KC1XX !

Since 2002, I live in Belgium now. We have about 2000m2 of own garden in a rather rural area with not too much noise for my favorite low-band DX-ing. I am mostly qrv on 40/80/160m - not at all on the higher bands. I have a nice 40m contest station 60km from my home to operate in the main contests in SSB/CW/RTTY from Brugge Marine Center.
It's a flat metal roof of 2000m2 next to the saltwater of the north sea harbour - great to put my switchable 4ele vertical array. It's performance equals easily a large 3ele Yagi, as my location for long haul DX with the saltwater is really great.
In the contests it is a great asset to be able to switch directions instantly, which is not possible with only a single large 40m Yagi. So to work a multi is much quicker than with a rotatable Yagi....

Hope to work you some time in one of the contests...