About Me
My QTH is in a small town called Westbury in the County of Wiltshire, about 19 km to the east of the City of Bath.
Locator: IO81VG
WAB: ST85
ASL: 383 Feet
Member of: RSGB (The Radio Society of Great Britain)
Member of: The Trowbridge and District Radio Amateur Club (TDARC)
Member: 8415 of the G-QRP
Member: 21190 of the SKCC
Member: 19525 of the FISTS
Station: IC-290E, IC9700, IC7300, FT-818, FT897, FT2980, Baofeng GT-3, TYT MD-380, Home-brew Sparkford 80m CW TRX, a Home-brew Chinese Super Rockmite 40m CW TRX, and a Kit built QCX 20
Preferred mode of operation: CW, together with making my own morse key, both straight, single and dual lever. My morse Keys can be seen together with the many other projects I have undertaken within the projects page.
I first became interested in Amateur Radio when I was 10 years old after receiving the Philips Radio Engineer kit for a Christmas present. It was a simple direct conversion radio receiver, which used small nuts and bolts in a plastic base to secure the ends of the components. The whole thing was enclosed in a plastic case with a cardboard dial and two knobs.
The kit was cleverly designed so that no soldering was required and the case easily bolted together giving a very smart, professional appearance.
After trying it out on the medium wave band, I decided to follow the additional instructions on how to wind a coil to make it tune to the trawler band (160 meters).
It was when listening to this band that I heard a man talking to someone about radio and he was using strange jargon. He then went on further to say that he was located in the City of Bath, which was not far from where I lived... I was intrigued; I had stumbled across my first encounter with a Radio Ham on what I found out later to be Top Band. The man’s name was Conway and his call sign was G3VBH, who sadly now is a silent key.
When I moved up to secondary school, there was a teacher called Bob Cropper (G3XCA) who had a valve AM Transceiver built into a school desk in his classroom. The School was called Nelson Hayden Boys and located in Trowbridge. On a Wednesday afternoon, the last lesson was set-aside for clubs. Mr. Cropper ran a radio club to which I enthusiastically became a member. The radio used in the club was one of the old No19 sets like the one shown below.
It was about at this time, that my father, who worked with radar just after WWII and was a keen electronics enthusiast, built me my first communications receiver.
The receiver was a valve superheterodyne with plugin Denco coils to change bands. The radio worked very well and as a keen SWL, I soon collected QSL cards from the many stations I heard.
My father taught me how to read a circuit diagram at an early age and with his help, we built many small projects from the Practical Electronics Magazine.
One such project was a yodeling doorbell which when completed, sounded nothing like a yodel, but more like a police siren. It sounded so awful that my mother would not let us install it over the front door, for fear of frightening visitors away.
On the front page of the December 1970 issue of Practical Wireless, appeared a radio project that was going to feature over the next three months.
My father agreed that this was the ideal radio to build together and would better fulfil my needs for a better amateur band radio. When complete it worked very well and served me well for many years.
I get considerable pleasure from constructing something with a handful of salvaged components; building something with virtually no cost is close to all radio hams hearts I am sure. Construction will always be an important part of the hobby for me.
I became a member of the G-QRP Club because of this pleasure of building and experimenting. The club magazine “SPRAT” is a real source of ideas and inspiration. An advantage of Small Power Radio Amateur Transmissions is that the circuits and construction are mostly very simple and quick to complete. I look forward to the SPRAT dropping through the letterbox four times a year.
Over my teenage years I became distracted by other things as teenagers do, and so had little time for radio, however, in 1980
I finally settled down and got married.
Knowing my long-time interest in amateur radio and my need to be actively engaged in a hobby, my wife encouraged me to sign up for the RAE course at the local Technical College in Trowbridge. At the end of the course, I took the two-part exam: - Licensing Conditions and Transmitter Interference - Operating Practices, Procedures, and Theory. To my great pleasure, I passed with distinction and credit.
I obtained my class B Radio Amateur license in 1981 and was given the call sign: G8ZFG by the Home Office, who back then, was responsible for issuing such licenses. The B license allowed access to the VHF - UHF bands only.
Moving to another house and then spending many years completely modernising it, followed by starting a family, meant the hobby would have to go on hold again.
It was some time before I finally took the next step and prepared for the 12 wpm Morse test, which I took and passed in Swindon in August 1994. Having passed the Morse test I was finally able to obtain the long-time coveted class A license with the call sign: G0VFS. At Last, I could use all the many bands and modes available to the fully qualified radio amateur and start enjoying some DX.
The years passed by with me moving again, doing up another house, bringing up two boys and studying for an HNC in Business IT with Bath University.
All this meant that there was little time for Amateur Radio and so it was set aside once more.
Wishing to spend some time with my aged father of 90 years and share a common interest with him, I took up model plain flying (Slope Soaring) and then, when walking to the edge of the hillside was to much for him, we took up astronomy, with the building of an astronomical observatory as our next project.
Information about these exploits can be found in the section on “Other Interest”.
Now, retired, I am able to re-engage as fully into ham radio as I can. I have much to catch up with and to that end, have joined the local amateur radio club, bought a new FT-991 and even had a go on the first Tuesday of the month 2 meter SSB contest.
I have never been that keen on contests, preferring the armchair rag chew approach, so it is something completely new for me, and yet I have found it very enjoyable and quite a challenge for me.
Another area of the hobby that I have neglected is CW / Morse code. My speed of recognition of the characters had dwindled to a pitiful state. This I want to change. When I first got my full license, I used CW quite frequently, in fact, it gave me a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction; this was something I wanted to feel again.
Joining the TDARC club CW net helped to rebuild my confidence and my copy speed considerably. Also, using the many smartphone Apps played there part in getting me back on track.
I am glad to say that I am now back on the air as a CW operator and once more enjoying the satisfaction and enormous pleasure this mode of operation brings.
In order to continue improving my confidence further as a CW operator I have since joined the FISTS club and also the SKCC.
The wonderful thing about amateur radio is that there is something for everyone; it is a multi faceted hobby you can leave and come back to with renewed interest and pick up where you left off or find something new to explore.
There have been many changes in the hobby over the years while I have been away from it and continue to be made; I look forward to the challenge of becoming better acquainted with them and the making of new friends from around the world.
Please introduce yourself and leave comments in the Guest Book
The picture below is the view from my bedroom window looking southeast to the range of hills bordering the Salisbury planes. At the bottom right of the picture can be seen my vertical antenna and the astronomical observatory mentioned els-ware on this site. Just out of the picture on the left-hand side is the well known Westbury White Horse.
From the centre of the picture to the far right, is the width of my garden, with the length being not very mush more than this. This small rear garden presents quite a challenge for HF antennas, however this is another area of the hobby I find fascinating and fun.
Below is a picture of the station updated on September 2019 with a large flat-screen TV, this is used as a second monitor allowing for the logbook' dynamic map to display when entering the contacted station in the log. The logbook used is the very fine RUMlogNG for Mac. Get it Here
