Biography

A little about me.
I first became interested in radio when I was around 14 years old.
I obtained a pair of walkie talkies which operated on the 27Mhz 11M band with a xtal transmitters and wideband superhet receivers.
I’m not sure of the TX power but from the very limited range I would imagine no more than a few Milliwatts of output power.
We could actually shout to each further distance than the range of the radios!
I loaned a book from my local library and discovered that the resonant length of an antenna for 27Mhz was around 8.8ft long and my radios only had telescopic whips around 24 inches.
Although making the radios look quite hideous I found some thin wooden cane rods and taped some bell wire to achieve the calculated resonant length.
To my amazement my radios were now able to communicate around a mile distance.
I was now hooked on the principle of radio communication and so it all began.

I left school at 15 years old (because you could then) and attended college for two years full time learning radio & TV servicing.
After finishing college I was employed by Burndept electronics servicing police radio equipment for around five years, during that time I passed the RAE and had a class B licence G8RDW and enjoyed working mostly two metres SSB notching up nearly thirty countries.
I eventually left employment and started my own business repairing Taxi radios and as the business grew I employed around 25 people.
The original equipment used Xtals to tune the radios to the operating frequencies and we would have to wait around six weeks for them to arrive, a far cry from today’s synthesized equipment.
We had customers from Edinburgh to Brighton from Norfolk to Plymouth, one year I drove 94,000 miles keeping customers happy.
We maintained around 50 CBS repeaters (common base stations) giving customers good coverage.

These days I am now retired and enjoying life as much as possible and that includes radio.
I am active on HF 20 Metres and up, 6 Metres, 4 Metres, 2 Metres and 70cms.
When possible I enjoy working two metre portable.
Also I am active on DMR which I find quite fascinating.

Thank you for reading this and good DX
73’s
Steve G4NHP

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

Yaesu FT-736R Quad Band 6M, 2M, 70cms, 23cms
Yausu FT-857D
Tate 8000 4M
Kenwood TS-830 HF
Kenwood FL2100 Linear
NAG 144XL 2M Linear
DMR: Anytone 878+, TYT430 plus MMDVM Hotspot

Antenna,s
Vertical Triband 6M, 2M, 70cms
HF Longwire
2M portable 13 Ele Cushcraft Boomer