Biography

Leaving school, and entering a professional electronics career I had the good fortune to meet a number of people and one person in particular, Peter Jaggs (now G7IQM) who gave me that Eureka moment. From that point forward electronics design seemed so much clearer to me. I am grateful to a number of other people in my life, too many to state here. They, if they read this must know who they are.

My main interest currently is working HF, and now work most digi modes primarily on 30m. Although I can work on any band on HF from 80m to 10m (NoV for 60m). I am also interested in working on 4m, 2m and 70cm, but most of my work is now HF in the evenings and early mornings at weekends from the home QTH.

I enjoy designing and building, my current major project is small foot print antennas, where I am working on a new multi-band compact vertical design primarily for HF, no radials. We have a very small garden, hence the very small HF antennas. I am hoping soon to compliment the HF antennas with 4m, 6m and 160m verticals.

I am very pleased to have received the Ostermeyer trophy from the RSGB in their centenary year for a published article in RadCom 2012. This coincides with my twenty fifth year of writing. That article was published during two issues for a VSWR meter I designed. One of the VSWR meters is in constant use each time I go on HF. I have also have been published in QST with a recent article on a remote 5 way HF switch.

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Antennas (VHF/UHF): 4m vertical, Slim Jim (70cm), 5-ele beam (70cm) and a half wave dipole for 2m.

Antennas (HF): Multiband vertical (3.5, 5, 7, and 10MHz). Multi-band vertical (14, 18,21, 24 and 29MHz).

Both HF antennas are automatically switched under computer control.

VSWR meters: Revex W570, and three home brew HF digital VSWR meters.

There are three main HF antennas working with the current station which comprises of:

Radios: Yaesu FT101ZD, Icom IC-7410, Icom IC-718, Yaesu 8800, Smallwonderlabs 30m & 20m QRP digi rigs, Pye Olympic (4m), Pye MX294 (2m), Pye MX296 (70cm), Motorola MCS 2000 (70cms), Alinco DR-430 (70cms), Anytone AT-588 (4m) and a Kenwood R1000.

HF ATU: MFJ-901B & two SG-239 Smart tuners.