My current
equipment is as followsHello And welcome.
So as you know I am 41 at the time of typing and married to dawn and work as a taxi driver
My main Hobby is Amateur Radio (known as being a radio ham) my UK callsign is G7PAF which i have held Since 1991 i became intrested in radio through CB back at the tender age 11 and for my 12th Birthday was given a CB radio and the rest as they say is Baseball history
My current
equipment is as follows
A Yaesu FT-1000 MKV Field with an output of 100 watts covering from top band 160mts or 1.8mhz up to 10mts or 29.7mhz using all modes
Next up is the Antenna System Bracketed onto the side of my house is a Tennamast which is at full streach 12 mts high onto this i have a stub mast which is 2 mts giving me a total of 14mts on top i have a Cushcraft MA5B multi band beam (3 elements) which cover 20mts 17mts 15mts 12mts and 10mts turned by a Yaesu G-600RC rotator
For such a small antenna i am more than impressd with the results from it in the last 12 months i have to worked a total of 239 countries using this antenna using mixed modes
Next up is the power house !!! well as someone once said "LIFE'S TO SHORT FOR QRP" I like qrp but i dont like sitting there shouting my pan off for hours on end. So enter the
Heatherlite Explorer Amplifier this puppy will deliver 1.5kw as per the makers stats (have have had it putting 1.6kw into a friends high quality dummy load) my choice to have a high power amp means it will more then cope with the 400 watts i require when running data modes which i belive would put a strain on lesser powered amps. running RTTY with 400 watts from an Amp only capable of 800 watts is going to cave in sooner or later ( i would rather it be later hi hi) A real beast of a power house
Ok so with my assortment of wire antenna's such as my converted G5RV which is now a delta loop for 40mts but also tunes up nicely on the other bands inparticular 30mts which i am very happy with and also my Square Loop antenna which runs around the parimeter of my rear garden and acts as the main 80mt antenna I needed an ATU that would handle the 400 watts full duty cycle that i would be using for my RTTY and CW contacts.
So after much searching and pondering i plummed for the PALSTAR AT1500CV when it arrived I was a bit surprised at the size of it.
My Experiance of ATU's has never been anything bigger than some of the MFJ atu's which seemed large but not to large So when i got this i thought WOW !! thats big !!
It sits on top of the Amp
The MFJ-993 now sits
on top of the Yaesu waiting
to find a use.
So we move onto the audio side
I am by no means an Audiophile and dont have the understanding for all this hertz thing and what the different frequencys are of the human voice but i know what i like to hear so rather than throwing a load of cash at some of the audio equipment out there I sat and paid attention to some of the stations running audio gear on SSB again some of the big guns were throwing money around like water to get Hi-Fi sound on SSB and to be honest while some sounded good to impressive others i felt sounded like they had just wasted there money due to the charicteristics of there voice no amount of money would give them a rooomy voice.
I carry a fair bit of bass in my voice and i feel that helps in achiving some of the responces associated with Hi-Fi sounding audio on ssb...but who knows thats my thoughts and as i say i know next to nothing on the subject.
So i plummed for the W2IHY equaliser it is an 8 band affair with a noise gate and the microphone is by Heil Sound the Gold Line GM-5 with a HC-5 insert
I listend to a number of these mics and equalisers being used with the FT-1000 MkV and i have to say they did sound appealing to my ears so i hunted round and found a ham selling a GM-5 and W2IHY equaliser for £150 which i thought (and still do) was a bargin so Dawn bought it for me as a birthday present.
The W2IHY Equaliser Heres the Heil GM-5
(ok EqualiZer for the yanks) hi hi Which is on a Heil shock Mount
and a Heil boom arm.
I got it hooked up and spent the next few days listening to my audio and trying different settings what a nightmare but i finally got it sounding pretty good with the combination of setting witht the radio and equaliser. as note i run it through my rigblaster pro which also has an inbuilt processor which also adds to the clarity of the audio
The Unsolicted reports i get always put a grin on my face and i feel it was money well spent in achiving Hi-Fi style audio on what is effectivly a shoe string budget and i get a great noise gate into the bargin.
So onto my DigiMode equipment
I like to run most modes but by and large i am mostly active using RTTY and BPSK31 63 and 125 and the odd bit of SSTV.
I run a couple of different programs but when it comes down to it for RTTY and BPSK I use MIXw and for SSTV I run MMSSTV
All running through the FT-1000 MkV Field and a Rigblaster Pro into a P4 2.8ghz computer with 2 Creative SoundBlaster cards (the 2nd SB card is for the other radio)
Heres the
two modems a Rigblaster Pro and on top a MicroHam IC
with the rigblaster i also have full pass through cat control for the FT-1000
and it also acts as a voice keyer (using MIXw and some Wav files) for contests.
The MicroHam IC modem is one that i use for the Icom IC-7000
I use this mainly for 2mts SSB and 6mts SSB and as a back-up HF
should the need (hopefully never arise).
I have given the IC-7000 a real good run on HF and again have ran it through
the W2IHY and GoldLine Mic using the ACC socket on the back of the Radio
and the reports i get back using FM AM and SSB are Fantastic and Stations
asking what i am using.
For general day to day ragchewing i use the Icom SM-20 base mic which is a good all
rounder and i dont get any complaints with it again i have this hooked up to the computer.
and allows for full use of all modes for RTTY ect ect and Also SSTV which we have a local
net for sending some pretty cool pictures at times
The LDG-Z100 tuner has a 40mt delta loop connected for HF and a Tri-Band vertical for
6mt 2mt & 70cm
Here are the antennas and the mast that i have at the back of the house
The MA5B ontop of the tennamast along with the feeder point of the delta loop
The WX-2000 Tri-Band Antenna fed to the IC-7000
And that more or less completes my main hobby run down feel free to drop me a line with any questions you may have regarding Amateur Radio or about any of the above equipment