Australian Ham Radio Discussion Forum ( AHRDF )

Greetings to all readers.

Paul Hayden, VK4ZBV, one of the widely known radio amateurs of long standing in the Brisbane region, passed to his rest last Friday after an illness, and his funeral and life-celebration will commence this coming Friday at 12:00 in the chapel at the Mt Gravatt cemetery.

His bereaved wife telephoned me this afternoon and was pleased that I offered to notify various ham radio media of Paul's passing.


Paul was one of those quiet technical 'whizzes' and was able to fix nearly any complicated radio or test instrument.  Quite a number of local fellows will remember Paul and will be saddened by this news.

Cheers and 73,

--Doug Friend , VK4OE.

Paul was one of the good guys. 

Thinking back, I first met Paul back in the mid-1960's and he was truly enthusiastic about AR. a real home-brewer and a mentor to the young guys like me.  I lived not far from him in the early 1970's, saw him only occasionally, but spoke to him on-air often.  I suspect his was one of the early QSL cards I collected too - and I certainly still have it.

Paul was a home-brewer extraordinaire. He built all of his early AM, SSB and FM radio gear from scratch, and I shouldn't forget to include his homebrew analogue ATV gear either.  He built a synthesised 2M FM "handheld" back before we could readily buy them. When I say handheld, it was probably more "brickheld" because it was closer to being the size of a house brick.  But it worked, and I could always tell which radio he was using on 2M FM because this one had a characteristic 'sproing' noise as it was moved / touched - simply due to VCO microphonics - but he didn't ever worry about solving that effect.

He even gave out numbers in a VHF/UHF Field Day only a few years ago, helping us get contacts in the logbook, and not because he needed to..

I mostly lost contact with Paul over the years except for an occasional Hamfest meet when we would do a quick catch-up and move on. I became aware of his illness only mid last week during a phone call from Kevin VK4WA. Even so his rapid passing was a surprise to me.

He will be missed by the AR community in South East Queensland.

Vale Paul Hayden, VK4ZBV.



Doug VK4ADC

Sad news.
I only got to know Paul in the last 12 months or so via our mutual interest in WSPR.
A very knowledgeable  bloke who pointed me in the right direction several times regarding WSPR.
He also put me onto a source of reco second hand laptops. He will be missed.
My condolences to his family.

Nev