Station 4S7AB, Ham Activity and History

Radio Station 4S7AB Activities & a Little bit of History

Updated on 01/Feb/2004

Active modes of my stn 4S7AB...

SSB, CW, PSK31, FeldHell, RTTY, MFSK. FSK31, ThorB, MT63, SSTV, HF Packet, VHF packet, Amtor, Pactor, APRS(Fixed) (all the digital modes)

Sattelies, EME, - Coming up soon.

For most of the digital modes, I use the soundcard and the freely available software or software written by me. Until the end of 90's the usage of soundcard was not very popular due to various issues. But now, it is the opposite. Things are changing and more and more hams get the chance of operating the digimodes of our hobby.

Active Bands

All the bands including the WARC bands upto 70cm. Mostly on 160,80,40,20,17,15,12 & 10m theses days . 2.3 Ghz and above is on 'Experimental stage'.

Equipment & Software

Band
Equipment.

HF

Kenwood TS 930 100W max

YAESU FT - 7B 50W max

Ant : 3el yagi for 20m, 6 el yagi for 15m, 5 el yagi for 10m. dipoles for 40m,80m

Rotor : ' Hy gain' with controller.

SWR/PWR meter : Loadstar SWR 3P

Mic : Dynamic 500Ohm for FT 7B, MC 80 & Heil HC4 for TS 930

Linear - Not yet.

VHF

KENWOOD TH 25 max 5W

Ant : 12el yagi

PC Pentium 166 Mhz, 16 MB, 2 GB, 14" SVGA.

Software Log-EQF, Logger, MixW, IZ8BLY Software suite, MTTY, ChromaPix, CWGet, and many other s/w packages + homemade s/w.

Some Pictures of the shack

Here is a photo taken on the 15th September 1999 inside the shack (above)
It shows my good Old PC, 486 DX 40 / 8MB/ 256 MB HDD which I used for all the logging + PSK31, RTTY and SSTV untill July 2000.

TS 930 S/AT is on the shelf.

This was taken by Timo OH1NOA in June 98 when he visited my home qth with his YL (now XYL) Kairit.

This was taken inside my station in 1997. The HF rig Yaseu FT 7B is right of me and next to it is the rotor indicator. Right to that is the ATU and then the 'Goodwill' CW kit. On top of the ATU is the SWR/PWR meter. My shack room is very small and managing everything within the small space is sometimes difficult.

Little Bit of the History

In my high school, I had a friend Asantha Cooray who was a SWL enthusiast. He introduced me into the hobby of SWLing somewhere in 1987. During that time I was fascinated by this undecodable human voice heard in between the SW BC bands.

In my high school 'Royal College - Colombo' there was a Amateur Radio Station 4S7RC which was completely inactive at that time. Somewhere in 1989, myself and few other friends got interested in this and asked the Radio Society of Sri Lanka (RSSL) to teach us on how to proceed and get the ham license. RSSL has accepted the invitation and as a result, so many senior hams including 4S7RR President of RSSL that time, 4S7AJ, 4S7VK, 4S7EA and some others visited 4S7RC and gave us lectures on theory and practise. The whole team was trained for CW by 4S7KG, the best straight key OP in 4S7 land.

As a result of above I got licensed as 4S5AB (Novice A) in 1991 and later in 1992 upgraded myself into 4S7AB with a General Class License, just passing the age limit to posses an Amateur Radio License in Sri Lanka.

This is how it all started for me to get on with this fascinting hobby. My first rig was a TH 25 on VHF. Later I bought the FT 7B for HF and then the TS 930S/AT.

Antenna construction went parallaly but has overtaken everything when I designed and constructed the 3 el full sized yagi for 20m. My signal from FT-7B (50W unprocessed) was heard almost everywhere in the world including USA via long path. Even though the antenna was FB, the mast construction was so unstable with 2 GI pipes holding the massive structure until I came up with a commercially made light duty tower with a rotor later on. Later I designed and constructed 2 seperate yagis for 10m and 15m on another homebrew tower.

I started RTTY in 1995 with a HAMCOMM modem. But with the latest development of the processing power of the computer, decoding is possible inside the computer using the sound card. Today I am active in almost all the digi modes.

Currently my interest is running into APRS, Microwave communication and satellite communication.

We are living in a golden era where the possibilities are endless for our hobby.

Band	Equipment.
HF	Kenwood TS 930 100W max YAESU FT - 7B 50W max Ant : 3el yagi for 20m, 6 el yagi for 15m, 5 el yagi for 10m. dipoles for 40m,80m Rotor : ' Hy gain' with controller. SWR/PWR meter : Loadstar SWR 3P Mic : Dynamic 500Ohm for FT 7B, MC 80 & Heil HC4 for TS 930 Linear - Not yet.
VHF	KENWOOD TH 25 max 5W Ant : 12el yagi
PC	Pentium 166 Mhz, 16 MB, 2 GB, 14" SVGA.
Software	Log-EQF, Logger, MixW, IZ8BLY Software suite, MTTY, ChromaPix, CWGet, and many other s/w packages + homemade s/w.

	This was taken by Timo OH1NOA in June 98 when he visited my home qth with his YL (now XYL) Kairit.
	This was taken inside my station in 1997. The HF rig Yaseu FT 7B is right of me and next to it is the rotor indicator. Right to that is the ATU and then the 'Goodwill' CW kit. On top of the ATU is the SWR/PWR meter. My shack room is very small and managing everything within the small space is sometimes difficult.