Radio Equipment

Collecting & using old radios is as much a hobby for me as operating, so I have quite a number of them!

Ten-Tec fans will spot various radios from the stable. A Jupiter 538 from 2004 is a very good general purpose radio with excellent CW performance. I also have an Omni D (top of the line from the early 80s), Argonaut V (introduced in 2002, an excellent QRP radio with general coverage receiver), and a Scout 555 (delightfully simple, no frills radio from the early 90s with very usable performance).

An Elecraft K2 is not in the picture as I'm always adjusting it - one of the problems of building your own radio! But it's an outstanding performer, especially on CW, with a receiver well above its price class. I've just completed the new Elecraft K3 which is an absolutely fantastic performer.

Also in view are the Atlas 215X Limited Edition (with RIT control) and Heathkit HW 8 QRP CW radio, both classic rigs from the 70s. The Yaesu FL2100Z linear from the early 80s is still going strong on the original 572Bs.

My oldest radio is an Eddystone 870A shortwave receiver, built in the 50s and fitted to the more luxurious cabins of the Cunard liners at the time. It still works perfectly.

And what station would be complete without an FT-817! The performance of any aspect of the radio would attract no particular attention, but to put so much functionality in such a small package is true engineering!

Aerials

With limited space in a conservation area, wire aerials are my only real option, although I'm always trying to work out how I might fit in a mini-beam without protests from either neighbours or the planning authority!

For 7MHz and up, a vertical delta loop, apex down, at about 10 metres is proving to be a very effective DX aerial. A doublet, 50 metres long and 10 metres high, works well on all bands, albeit rather short and low for 1.8MHz. Both aerials are fed with open wire feeder and tuned with a Z match balanced tuner.

About me

I'm an electronic engineer by profession and work in the RF and microwave semiconductor industry. My work has taken me all over the world and I lived in southern Germany and northern California for many years. Travel and culture still facinates me as much now as ever. The story as to how I became interested in radio is on the background page on this site. I'm married to Berit and we have two children, Emma, and Ken. Berit is originally from Sweden, of Finnish-Swedish parents, and we met whilst learning to fly in Santa Rosa, California. She then took me back to Somerset, England, the county where I grew up! There are sometimes some photos of us here.

Our hobbies are sailing, camping, bird watching and sea and island life. We spend much of our summer in one of the most beautiful, unspoilt and undiscovered parts of Europe, on the island of Emsalö in the Finnish archipelago.

About this site:

I've created these pages with Google Page Creator so am now independent of computer and operating system and can edit from any PC. It seems to generate reasonable pages whilst still allowing some control over the HTML code, if desired. This site was first generated with a very basic PC running Linux, using Mozilla's SeaMonkey browser and composer, along with Google Page Creator. Details here.

Ian Greenshields. Last updated April 2008