The location: My QTH is located on the eastern edge of the city of
Southampton, the major seaport on the south coast of England, about one kilometre from the the eastern bank of the
River Itchen.
There is a clear view west over Peartree Green and the City beyond. Being open to the southwest ensures that we enjoy the best of the winds and storms that hit the south coast. We are also open to the docks and are frequently subjected to fireworks as yet another liner leaves port!
The QTH is some twenty metres (65 feet) above sea level and the station is situated in a first floor flat overlooking the Green. Peartree green is a large open space partly a 19th C village green and partly reclaimed WW2 railway land all of which is now a protected open space. Click
here for station locators.
The Station: Unfortunately, I am unable to erect any external HF aerials although I intend to erect something for 2 metres. For HF I have created a fan dipole in the attic (see menu, left), having the shack on the first floor means that a dipole is the best way to go as any attempt at an RF earth is likely to lead to interference problems. As well as operating from the QTH I intend to operate portable - cycling and backpack. I am still in the process of proving the fan dipole but I plan to add a slinky dipole for 80 meters so that I can work more UK stations.
My rig is an ICOM IC-703 whose output passes through a Comet 50MHz low pass filter and then some 10 metres of 50 ohm coax goes up to the attic. I use Ham Radio Deluxe for control and logging - this program is suburb and a godsend! I also feed audio to the PC and use software to decode SSTV, RTTY, PSK31, etc. For checking on DX I use DX Monitor, For locating I use DX Atlas, other programs include CWDecoderXP, MMTTY, RX-PSK31, MMSSTV and DSP-Filter. (Put any of those program names into Google and you will be able to locate them.)
The computer dual boots XP & SUSE Linux, basically I only use Windows for amateur radio because I really rate Ham Radio Deluxe. The box is about three years old and the processor is an AMD Athlon 2.08 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. The video card has 128MB on board memory. The computer runs on a wired network of three machines and a printer.
The Operator: In the autumn of 2006 I returned to amateur radio after a break of some 40 years, I purchased a RadioShack DX394 on eBay and strung a 40 foot wire around the picture rail of the living room, tuned it with a Mizuho Sky Coupler and was quickly re-hooked! Within a couple on months I decided that I wanted to became a licensed amateur.
Although I had taken my RAE in 1964 I had lost interest and never did get a licence, unable to locate the certificate and the City and Guilds Institute unable to find it I set about joining my local club, Itchen Valley Amateur Radio Club, and purchased the ICOM IC-703. At the end of March I, and two other club members, passed the the Foundation and Intermediate Examinations and within a couple of weeks I was 2E0WYM.
Over Easter during a clear out what did I find but my RAE certificate! So within a couple more weeks I became M0WYM. Why WYM? In honour of the on-line village of
Wymsey which I created in 1998 and one of the first communities to be totally wired. Over the years we had the dubious pleasure of appearing in the Daily Mail, on Channel Four, Slashdot, The New York Times and others.
Currently I operate on all the HF bands but suffer awful QRM on 20, 17 & 15 m from a nearby plasma TV. I prefer operating on 6 and 10 when they are open but I monitor all the bands when I'm operating so maybe we'll work each other! Charlie.
Update March, 2008: Just before Christmas I purchased a Kenwood TR-451E 2 metre all mode transceiver on eBay and resonated my 6m telescopic portable antenna on 145.5 MHz. I stood it in the shack window and manage to get an SWR of around 1.3:1 and it worked fine for the local net and up to about 25 miles.
I have now built a vertical dipole which is mounted on the side of the house some five metres above ground level and about 25 metres above sea level, signal levels are much higher and reports would suggest that my transmission is some 20db higher.
Briefly, the dipole is constructed around a three way round plastic conduit box from B&Q where the 8mm OD aluminium tube also comes from. Plastic wine corks will fit snugly into the 20mm conduit box ports which can also be used to hold the corks while an 8mm hole is drilled to take the aluminium. The co-ax feed, with ferrite rings, runs through the steel tube that supports the dipole. The ends of the elements, corks and box screws were generously coated with silicon rubber.
Another major change is that I am no longer using Windows but Ubuntu Linux which is superb and the only drawback is that Ham radio Deluxe will not run under WINE (a windows emulator). Amateur radio is well supported in Linux and currently for logging I use Xlog which is able to interface with my ICOM 703 which eases the logging process.
Locators:
Maidenhead: IO90hv
Latitude: 50:54:08N
Longitude : 1:22:26W
SU44115
WAB = SU41
Postal Code : SO19 2HD
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