Biography

Hi and thanks for looking me up, If we've had, or are having a QSO, thank you for the contact. G7H is a call that I hold for use in contests, my main call is G7SYW.

IMPORTANT:
If you've looked up my contest call of G7H and ended up here, please ensure you have logged our contact correctly. If you send me a QSL card, please send it to G7H VIA G7SYW through the buro - thanks.

All QSO's are sent an electronic QSL via eQSL (AG), HRDLog, ClubLog, and LoTW. Paper QSL's are via the RSGB bureau, I send out a large number of cards 3 or 4 times a year depending on how many I have, so please be patient.

Any cards received which I have not yet sent will be replied to 100%

Way back, my experience as the local CB rig doctor began my path to taking the RAE and gaining my amateur licence in 1994.

My current QTH is in the small town close to Braintree in North Essex, England, this was originally my parents house and I moved back into the property during 2019.

Feel free to visit my website at www.g7syw.com where you can find more information about me, the shack and maybe download some files you want.​

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

The main radios here are a Yaesu FT-920, a Kenwood TS-2000, and an Icom IC-756 PRO3. All radios use Ham Radio Deluxe for CAT control, HRD Logbook for logging, with HRD DM780 for digimodes including RTTY, SSTV, PSK etc, for FT8 WSJT-X is used along with GridTracker.

Due to not having much space to install HF antennas, my main antenna is a Cushcraft R7000 vertical which stands in the corner of my garden.

An 80m 1/4 wave long wire at 8m high configured as an inverted L, fed with a remote ATU at the base with approx 100 feet counterpoise serves as my secondary antenna, although being less than 20 feet away from the local power sub-station it does pick up a lot of electrical noise.

For 6m a horizontal halo type antenna and a homebrew 1/4 wave vertical are mounted in my loft, and finally, a stealth 20m dipole lays on the roof of the house.

For VHF/UHF I use a Diamond X300 co-linear antenna mounted on the chimney. The original antenna was there for over 15 years, although after all this time of being battered by the wind, it developed a slight lean to it. Maybe someday I will get up on the roof to replace the feeder and check the connections & straighten it up again etc.

That someday has now come, and gone... the antenna has now been replaced with a nice shiny new one. It turned out the slight lean was caused by the mounting bolts wearing away the material in the softer bracket and creating an elliptical bolt hole.

I am very active on FT8 and use 3 SignaLink USB interfaces for the digimodes. Although I started with a homebrew interface which used the PC internal soundcard - when the second (and 3rd) radio was added I decided to use a USB interface for each radio due to running out of free card slots in the PC.

My preference for FT8 during the daylight hours is mainly due to a neighbour's solar panel inverter creating noise across the bands which can cause problem in hearing SSB contacts. WSJT-X, GridTracker and JTAlert are configured to enable any of the radios to be used on FT8, either individually, or at the same time if desired. The TS-2000 is sometimes used for digimodes on 2M.

A TYT UV MD-380 DMR handie radio being used with a MMDVM hotspot running Pi-Star is usually monitoring the HubNet or TG91 talkgroups. When walking about I have a Baofeng UV-5r.

I occasionally listen on Echolink and/or network radio, but don't consider these to have the challenges of "real RF" radio :)

For mobile I use a Yaesu FT-857D with an ATAS 120A antenna for HF & 6m, and a Watson W7900 antenna for VHF/UHF.