Amateur radio

see copyright notice. Page created 15-May-2021. Use the button groups above to navigate quickly around the site.

I obtained my "Amateur (Sound) Licence A" in 1972, and was active on the 160m and 80m bands, using mainly home-made equipment of my own design, for about 20 years. I still have the licence, but lost interest in the hobby when nearly everyone else I spoke with was using commercial equipment, and very few seemed to have the slightest idea what those clever Japanese engineers had put inside it.

Here's a photo of my 80m SSB "rig", taken in October 1986. The large box on the left houses an experimental receiver; above it are the transmitter's SSB generator and drive. Both use analogue sequence-asymmetric ("Polyphase") filters, which had something of a cult following at the time. The linear amplifier (on the right) delivered 300W PEP into an unusual dipole antenna, comprising a 20m horizontal radiator, end-loaded by inverted-V sections and driven via an air-cored "balun" transformer in the loft. Detailed write-ups of all this and more will appear in due course.

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