Biography

Electro/Mechanical Engineer originally from North Yorkshire now resident in South Wales.

Started out working for Ferranti later to be taken over by GEC-Marconi working on Sonar systems, building and calibrating transducers and hydrophones for submarines. For the last ten years I've been working as an RF calibration and repair engineer on aerospace equipment such as IFR, Aeroflex, JC Air, BF Goodrich, TIC etc. Nav Comms, VOR, ILS, DME, A, B, C, Mode S, TCAS, ADS-B radar test sets. Test equipment used - Rohdes & Schwarz, HP/Agilent/Keysight, Yokogawa, Fluke, Anritsu, Boonton, Marconi - RF Power meters, Measuring RX, Audio Analysers, Spectrum Analysers, VNA's, Scopes, Distortion Analysers, RF Signal generators inc. Avionic, Arbitrary waveform generators, etc.

I've always had a fascination of radio since being a small lad. My father worked as a radar engineer at a RAF BMEWS site and encouraged me to strip wireless receivers down and do small projects.

In and out off the hobby but at the moment mainly concentrate on SSB and Digimodes including PSK-31, FT8, FT4 and WSPR on HF. Interests include propagation and building antennas.

Equipment

HOMEBASE:

Radios: Yaesu FTDX-10, Yaesu FT991A, Yaesu FT-897D c/w FP-30 PSU and FC-30 ATU

Acces: Acom 1010 RF HF Linear Amplifier, HLA-300 Linear Amp (300 Watts), Yaesu G-1000DXC Rotator, RigExpert AA-1400, GeoChron 4k Ham Radio Bundle.

Antennas: Mosley MiniBeam 32A, Multiband Dipole, 2 x homebrew 7 element horizontal and vertical polarised for 2m, Homebrew Carolina Windom 80.

PC: Microsoft Surface Go 2 - M3 Intel i5 CPU 128 Gb SSM 8 Gb RAM

Software: Ham Radio Deluxe & Digital Master S/W. Powered through solar power.

MOBILE: Yaesu FT-857D, ATAS-120A antenna, various single band Ham Sticks.

PORTABLE: Yaesu FT-857D/897D CAT Controlled, Yaesu SCU-17 USB Interface Unit for PSK31, FT8, FT4, WSPR, wire dipole cut for 20 metres, linked dipole for 20, 30, 40 metres. Recently trying end fed coaxial dipole quick deploy wire antennas with 12 and 10 metre SpiderBeam. 2 X lithium-phosphate-batteries LiFePo4-batteries. Microsoft Surface Pro.