My interest in radio started at a young age in my grandparents basement with their old shortwave receiver. Hearing the voices from who knows where raised my curiosity that still continues today.

In the mid 70's, I got into CB, and continued with that for some years, but as the band got more and more chaotic, my interest faded. In 1982, a friend gave me an RCA GR-10 receiver that he had found in a back alley beside a dumpster. As soon as he brought it over, I pulled off the case and cleaned it up, as well as replacing the tattered power cord. I turned it on, and with little more than a short piece of speaker wire for an antenna, I was bit once again by the shortwave bug.

It wasn't untill 1991 when a friend phoned about a ham class he heard about was about to start, and was I interested. Absolutely! Two nights a week for three months I drove an hour each way to take the class, and when I was done, came away with my Basic and Advanced qualification. It took me another thirteen years to get my Morse qualification, and I don't know how I made it, but I did.

Current Gear

At present, I have two HF stations set up. The home QTH in Burnaby consists of a Yaesu FT-847 into a G5RV through an MFJ 948 tuner, with a Yaesu FT-301d for a back-up rig. At my work in South Vancouver, I have a Yaesu FT-901DM feeding either a full wave horizontal loop on 80meters, or an R5 vertical for twenty meters through an MFJ-969 tuner.

For VHF and up, at work I have an Alinco DR-570 dual band feeding a Comet vertical. The work van has a Kenwood TR-7800 into a quarter wave mounted on the front fender. At home, the 847 does double duty, being a dc to daylight rig. On 2 meters the 847 feeds a homebrew eggbeater, and a 7 element yagi for 70 cm.

Handheld radios include a Yaesu VX-5R, two Yaesu FT-530's, and my first ht, an Icom 2AT that still runs my packet setup. I have a number of commercial HT's as well that I hope to convert for APRS use.

The latest addition is a Yaesu FT-817. To go with it, I modified the swr circuit in an MFJ-940 tuner to work with the qrp levels from the FT-817. I found the built in swr meter in the 817 to be less than accurate, especially on 80m. I mounted an old microswitch on a small piece of plexiglass, which works great for a small key. An old cassette carrying case was modified to make the whole works portable and protected, and it also holds a few key pages of the manual, as well as a spare battery. A dipole cut for 80, and a nice homebrew, collapsible, 3 element, 2 meter beam rounds out the package.

Update, 2008

The HF station at work is off the air. When the roof was replaced, the antennas had to come down. Add to that the new building that went up next door to us. Construction there is not yet finished as of june/08. Once construction is finished, I will have a listen to see if the noise floor increases or not. The noise floor was allready very high with a 400kv tower accross the road from us, but The filters in the old 901 would help out there. With the new building next door containing a couple hundred flourescent fixtures, the noise may be unbearable. Wish me luck!

The mobile rig in the work van has been upgraded to a Yaesu FT-857. What a great little rig! 160 meters through to 70 cm in a package that is smaller than the old Kenwood 2mtr. The antenna, a fiberglass continuous wind for 80 mtr, is fed through an LDG AT-897 autotuner. What a great package! I had it in place before the roof was being replaced so my check-ins to our BC Net were still possible. Even though the antenna is a comprimise, as most hf mobile set-ups are, it works pretty good, and when the band is open, distances of up to 1500 miles have been achieved on 80 meters.

At home, the MFJ tuner has been replaced with an LDG AT-200 Pro autotuner. Not much to say, other than what a pleasure not having to refer to charts for changing frequencies, then having to touch up on frequency. This tuner does it's job well, loading up the G5RV as well as the 80 meter dipole without any sign of problems. The only complaint I would have would apply to all autotuners. With a manual tuner, you can tell if an antenna problem has developed since the last QSO as the swr be poor. With the autotuner, we don't know how bad the swr was before starting the tuning process. A work-around could be to have an analogue meter in line, and have the tuner set to tune only when requested by pressing the tune button.

 

Test Equipment

Most of my test gear would be best described as vintage, but functional. I have heard it said that we look for those things that we desired in our youth, but could not aquire for one reason or another. This describes me well. Not that I discriminate against new equipment, but a blend of nostalgia and finances dictate my choices. Mostly finances.

The latest piece of gear is an Elecraft test oscillator. Very nice kit, built in about 2hrs and put into an Altoids tin, of course. Very usefull for quick checking of a reciever for sensitivity and s meter function.

I have a few DVOM's, from a Fluke 88 to a cheap off shore built unit that works surprisingly well. Don't discount the value in some of these 20 buck meters! This one even has a Frequency meter in it that works great for checking out gensets to see if the cycles per minute/voltage changes with loads approaching the upper limits of the gensets rated output.

A recent aquisition is an old spectrum analyzer. A 300mhz Kaye, with aTek scope built in for a monitor. I have not played with it much as yet, but could not pass up the oportunity when it came my way.

I have a few o'scopes as well. A 100mhz Tektrnonix, a 20mhz Hitachi, and a 2mhz Heathkit with a standalone switch for dual trace operations.

Signal Generators include an Advance 1 to 80mhz, an Edison 25 to 900mhz as well as a couple of hobby types: Heathkit IG-42, Paco 30, and a Stark with a few nice mods.

Two HP audio oscillators and a B&K function generator take care of the low end of the spectrum.

For antenna work I really like my MFJ-269 Antenna Analyzer. The versatility of this piece of gear is amazing!

The wattmeters I have are Philco-Sierra units. I have two, with the three common slugs for each, good from 2mhz through 500mhz and from 5 watts to 1kw. Very nice older units, though finding slugs is a challenge. If you find one of these with slugs for under a hundred bucks, grab it! Once they are calibrated, they are as accurate as a Bird.

One of my favorite tools would have to be my Weller desoldering station. I bought it used for $60, and wonder how I did with just wick for the past too many years. It makes swapping out parts a snap. Along with my Panavise, working on a circuit board is now a real pleasure. I didn't like the aluminum base available for the Panavise, so I made one from a piece of 3/8 plexiglass. Now if I could just figure out what all those wiggly lines, beeps, and needle movements mean, I would have it made! Oh, and a pair of asbestos gloves to keep my fingers from getting burnt!

 

Projects On The Go

At present I have a Kenwood TS-520 and a Kenwood TS-520S on the bench. The 520 just needs a little tweek, whereas the 520s has a problem on tx in the mixing stage. Also on the bench is a Dentron MLA2500. No status on the amp as yet.

Future plans are to get an APRS package put together. I do have a couple GPS units to use, as well as a couple commercial ht's that need to be rocked to 144.390mhz, then aligned. I would also like to get together a remote tuner, and I do have a couple pieces for that puzzle, but need more yet to make it automatic.

For more info, check out the APRS link.

 

Project Updates

Well, the Dentron finnally got it's new finals! Many thanks to a very generous ham in California who had sold me a set that didn't quite work out, then set it straight by pulling the tubes from his own amp! Truly an unexpected surprise, it restored my faith in humanity!

One of the '520's went back east for parts, and the other went to a new ham here in the Vancouver area.

On the APRS front, I did assemble an Opentracker kit, and tested it some. It works well, though I still have to package the whole works in a more suitable manner. When I put it to use, it is a tangled mess of wires and jumpers.

I made a change to the portability of the '817. Each leg of the dipole is now spooled in a plastic housing for chalk lines used in construction. Each spool consists of 64 feet of stranded, yellow insulated wire. I felt that as I would be using the setup in public areas, that the yellow color would be more visable to pedestrians, in case I could not get the wire up very high. The weight of the plastic spools also helps in tossing the wire over higher branches. Best distance achieved as yet on 80 is just over a thousand miles, with 2 1/2 watts!

To help power the 817, I have started using 3cell Lithium Polymer batteries @2100mah. To connect them, I made up an adapter to connect from the jack on the back of the rig, through Anderson Powerpoles to the batteries. With the voltage displayed on the front of the 817, I can monitor the battery voltage to prevent draining them to below 9.0 volts for the 3 cell pack. The packs weigh in at about 6oz each, which is about half of what NiCd or NiMh weigh for the same energy. To recharge them in the field, a portable, flexable solar panel fed through a 7812 regulator works well. The batteries can not be over charged with this setup as the fully charged voltage of the lipo's is 12.6 volts. On a decent, sunny day, 2-3 hours tops them nicely.

By the way, I still have that GR-10, and it is one piece of gear that I will never part with.