LAST UPDATED: 26th August 2010

This page is dedicated to my radio equipment and antennas (known as a “shack” in ham radio - which is really the name of the room that holds the gear, although like most I do not have room for a dedicated shack, instead I occupy part of the dining room (which also serves as a home office and is where I work from). Over the past 30 years I have had many different set ups, but the one I have now has been the same for a number of years now, it is cpmpact, but performs well. The layout is the best I can achieve as far as efficiency and space saving go. The HF/6m rig is an Icom IC756pro, SEM Audio Multifilter and a Vectronics AT100 active tunable antenna/preselector, which is used on MW and the NDB band, where the IC756PRO has a designed attenuation and as a consequence is rather deaf. The AT100 makes a very real difference to signals heard from 300kHz up to 1600kHz (it also gives a useful 2 s-point boost on 6m, which is a bonus as it is only supposed to cover up to 30MHz!) The AT100 has been ‘modified’ by having it’s 3 transistors replaced, due to me accidentally putting RF though the unit while it was on. It is now is the receive only chain so can’t be transmitted through. The other useful piece of gear in the shack is a CI-V controller for pc to radio control. I have a Racal RA1792 general coverage receiver which I use for broadcast listening and DRM. I spread my listening between all modes but my preference has always been for Morse Code (CW). However, the wealth of new digital modes made me curious and I am a convert to these modes and I have to say that, at the moment, the vast majority of my listening is done on one of the PSK modes (usually BPSK31). I have no hesitation in swapping modes if there is a 'new one' about or I see something on the DX cluster that looks interesting! I think to stick to one mode is to miss out on a great deal of enjoyment - I have learnt so much over the past few years regarding different modes etc. and am always willing to try a new mode.

The main antenna is a 20m long OCF (Off Centre Fed) Dipole in an inverted Vee/L configuration due to the length restriction of the garden. The apex of the OCF is 10m above ground and has a 7 turn/3 ring choke 10 feet down the coax which makes it into a Windom type antenna. This gives the advantage of having a top fed vertical radiating element, which makes a big difference on 6m and probably other bands too (it seems to be very good for Sporadic E on 10m). This antenna was originally 10.5m long but I replaced the shorter, 3.5m, wire with a 13m wire. It has a slightly different element length ratio than the smaller one (which was 3:1). The longer element is now sloping at about 45 degrees instead of a much shallower slope, which could only be achieved by lengthening the support pole at the fence post from 3m to 5m or more, which at this time is impractical. Above are various shots of the OCF/Windom configuration. The drawing gives more detail of the actual installation. Over the course of the past weekend I decided to tune the antenna as in it’s  prior configuration the resonant points were away from most of the amateur bands. I plotted the SWR at 100kHz intervals from 6.0MHz up to 24MHz and viewed the results as a graph in MS Excel. I could see from this that the antenna appeared to be too long and I trimmed about a metre off the length of longer wire (which brought the overall length down to about 20m. I found that it now resonated on 40m, 20m, 17m and 10m. It would be possible to operate on these bands without an ATU. The only problem is that weather does affect the resonance. I retested to day and found that the resonance has shifted downwards by a couple of 100Hz (we have had quite a bit of rain overnight and obviously this has affected the conductivity of nearby objects (most of which are made of wood and hence get, and stay, wet!). The SWR on 40, 20, 17 and 10m are all 2:1 or below, which is acceptable. 30 and 15m are extremely high (although the auto ATU of the IC756pro will tune them, losses will be high and efficiency low) 12m is around 3-4:1, which is borderline, and I would not be happy transmitting on this band without an ATU. I do not like transmitting if the SWR is above 2.5:1 and I do not have an ATU (losses become rather high and puts unnecessary stress on the transmitter).

Here is a table showing the SWR of the 20m OCF on the amateur bands before tuning and after tuning. Figures in orange  are from previous tests. Acceptable SWR is indicated in green. Note, the antenna does not tune on 60m/5.2MHz or 160m/1.8MHz even with the auto ATU. The antenna will tune on 80m but the efficiency is liable to be very low. Overall there has been an improvement to the SWR on the amateur bands I like to operate on, but it would be impossible to have a low SWR on every band with this kind of antenna. Although essentially a half wave dipole for 7MHz, the OCF does not exhibit the same harmonic relationships as a standard centre fed dipole. A centre fed half wave dipole cut for 7MHz would have a fairly low SWR on it’s odd harmonics (i.e 21MHz. 3rd harmonic) and very high SWR on even harmonics (14 and 28MHz). From the table below, you can see that this is not the case. The dipole has a low SWR on 7, 14 and 28MHz (EVEN harmonics the fundamental half wave, then a full wave and a double wavelength.) and high SWR on 21MHz (ODD harmonic) - the strange one is 18MHz, I cannot see a harmonic relationship here - unless the 10 feet of coax/vertical radiator is contributing to the overall length in some manner. It would need an analyser capable of displaying complex impedances to understand how the antenna is working. Whatever is going on, it certainly seems to be a useful antenna!

 I will continue to carry out tests and see if there are any improvements I can make to the system in readiness for the Winter DX Season.

The other antenna used here is a Wellbrook ALA1530s active loop with a diameter of 1m. This is mounted at 3m above ground on my ‘antenna tree’ (a 10m high dead tree with the branches cut off by a previous occupier!) In an ideal world the antenna should be rotatable to take advantage of it’s excellent bi-directional nulls but mine is on a fixed mount and attached to the tree so rotating it would be an issue, but if I do need to move it I can rotate it to some extent by hand.  As frequency increases the directional properties of the loop become less apparent (except for local noise) and I am able to hear stations from all headings. Yes it is expensive, but having used it for a good while, I can say that the expense is justified. This one antenna covers me from LW right up to 6m (although being so low it does not work nearly as well as it did at my old QTH where it was at 14m and in the clear also this one has a fair bit less gain at 6m than my old one (the ALA330s))! The 1530 is mailny used for receiving frequencies up to 7MHz on the main receiver, as a general purpose and DRM antenna for the Racal receiver, and as a ‘noise’ pickup antenna for use with the MFJ noise canceler, a job which it does very well (being closer to the ground it picks up electrical noise from surrounding houses, such as plasma TV’s and PC’s more strongly than the OCF and allowing me to null out or reduce the worst noise sources to an acceptable level.)

Now that I am spending more and more time using digital modes I decided that I really should use a better sound device than the built in sound system on the shack PC (which has recently been upgraded due to a system failure after over a year of storage in a cold shed). While the onboard sound proved to be fairly adequate, I heard more and more reports of onboard sound systems not really being up to the job so I had a scout around on eBay and found a reasonably priced Creative Creative SBLive 24 bit USB card. I have to admit that the new card is worth every penny. It exhibits a greater signal to noise ratio than the onboard system and also has a much better dynamic range, most useful when trying to decode weak digital signals in the presence of very strong ones. Also, it exhibits no PCI bus noise. This was a bonus I hadn’t though of!The compact, but very functional shack at G4UCJ (see ‘DXing’ for tips on efficient station layout).

The flat screen monitor is for my dedicated radio PC and is running HRD Ham Radio Deluxe v5 by Simon HB9DRV and is showing the ‘PSK Reporter’ screen - each coloured mark is a station that has been decoded that day - this particular day was mainly Europe and North America, looking at the map. As of late January, I have a new addition to the shack in the form of a Racal RA1792 HF receiver. This is a fine receiver and covers from DC to 30MHz, although sensitivity at VLF could be quite low, also my antenna is not designed for such low frequencies. I will try to hear the SAQ Anderson Alternator in Sweden on 17kHz next time it is fired up. UPDATE: Tried for SAQ on Anderson Day but could not hear anything - I will try again at Christmas, when it is next operational. I’m not overly optimistic but you never know.

Here is a closer view of the RA1792, which has been restored to fully working condition by G4IRQ, to who I am indebted. This radio has non backlit displays and although not the original displays, they are displays from an RA1792. The displays are one of the weaknesses with the RA1792 as they tended to fail (the LCD technology was very new then and was not overly reliable). Replacement displays are now available (3rd party, not original) but are not that easy to fit, especially if you wish to have a backlit display, which is nice but not essential-unless you operate in the dark!!

Despite being 30 years old, it still receives as well as a modern day radio but obviously the filtering is not up to DSP standards. One very useful feature is a 16kHz AM filter, which can be selected in CW mode. Why is this useful? Well together with a -6kHz shift of the BFO gives an effective filter of 10kHz and together with the ‘Dream’ software, can demodulate DRM (digital shortwave radio broadcasts). I am currently listening to the BBC/DW service on 13590kHz from Sines in Portugal. There is no fading or background noise on the signal as is common with shortwave signals, however if the signal drops out, you lose audio. I can now monitor 2 bands at the same time, which is very useful when dxing!

The stack of equipment (from top to bottom): 30A 13.8V PSU, External comms speaker hooked up to the shack PC, Vectronics AT100 200kHz-30MHz active antenna/preselector, SEM Multifilter, MFJ1026 phaser, External comms loudspeaker with headphone switch (output from the audio filter), Icom IC756pro HF/6m transceiver, Creative USB soundcard and the Racal RA1792 HF receiver. The comms speakers have tailored audio response curves to emphasize  speech frequencies (approx 300-3000Hz).

Close up detail of the SEM Multifilter. This has dual notches plus peak, low pass or high pass filters. The wide notch is available in all mode. I usually run this filter in ‘peak’ mode. at a centre frequency of 800Hz. Why do I leave it on a fixed frequency and not adjust it to the signal? Well 800Hz is the CW side tone frequency offset of my Icom, so when the signal is tuned in correctly, it will be loudest at 800Hz, and when I narrow the DSP filters, I will not lose the signal because it will always be in the centre of the filter passband. Also, I know that I am receiving on exactly the right frequency. If I send a spot to the ‘DX Cluster’ I know that I am reporting the correct frequency. It’s a bit pedantic, but knowing I am on the correct frequency can be very useful especially when the signals you are trying to hear are extremely weak - as was the case with the K4M expedition to Midway Island which I heard this morning on 30m (last day of operations and first time I had heard them so that was very lucky!). For most of the time they were around noise level but occasionally they would peak up by a few dB and I could hear enough to make out a callsign.

Some Receivers and Transceivers from my Ham Radio ‘Career’

Below are some of the receivers and transceivers I have owned or have been used in my shack. There are some real classics here, examples of which sometimes pop up on eBay. Beware though as the older models may well need some kind of work doing to them to get them back to their former glory, or even to work at all. The older ones may need leaky capacitors changing or need to be operated on a low voltage for a period of time, using a variac. The voltage can be increased over a period of days. It would be best to avoid projects like this unless  you are experienced in restoring old electronic equipment - or you know someone who is and can guide you through the pitfalls.

The Eddystone s640 was the first receiver I used. It was my mothers receiver when she was an SWL back in the 60’s and early 70’s. I had it hooked up to a rather poor wire antenna whilst I learned the craft of Shortwave listening. The 640 had been used a lot, my mother had amassed quite a few log books and over 3000 prefixes (that was quite a feat in those days), it was a bit deaf up on 15 and 10m but gave me a good idea of how to tune signals and use the available controls to make the signals as readable as possible.

Ahh the Barlow Wadely XCR30, what an unusual radio that was, but i have to say it was a darned fine receiver. It was a real dx portable. It could resolve SSB and thanks to the Wadely loop system had virtually no drift. This, coupled with good sensitivity made it an excellent radio. I used to sneak it into school in my bag and go into an unused upstairs classroom during my lunch break to listen to 20m dx. I heard lots of places, including Brazil and America. Not difficult really, but to a 12/13 year old boy it was amazing. Some of my teachers were quite impressed, others were not so! Wish I still had this one, they command a high price these days if they come up for sale.

The KW Viceroy, I had quite a few QSO’s with one of these during the first few years of having my full license. I used it with a Grundig Satellit 3000 (see below) as a receiver as the Viceroy either didn’t have one or it didn’t work - I can’t remember which. Switching between tx and rx was done manually with a coax antenna switch - quite often I would forget to switch it back to receive afterwards. As you can imagine, I didn’t do pile ups etc back then!

The venerable Grundig Satellit 3000 graced my shack for many years, until I sold it a couple of years ago - it was starting to show it’s age, well it was over 20 years old and had been used a lot. It was great on broadcast reception as it had 3 bandwidths (the narrow one was just an audio filter though), an antenna matching circuit, and it was the first radio to be equipped with a digital readout. Oh, and the sound quality was excellent, thanks to the large speakers and separate bass and treble controls. The one area it fell down on was SSB. It drifted like the clappers and you would have to chase a signal about. Some of this was due to the rotary drum used to change bands, the contacts would get dirty and make poor contact.

I quite like the TS120v (which is the 10 watt non WARC version of the TS130s), even though it was a single conversion superhet, it was still a nice receiver to use. One thing the TS120/130 possessed was IF shift which was really useful in removing QRM. This was my dads radio (we were both SWL’s back then) and it was hooked up to a Mosely 3 ele tribander at 30 feet or a 15m inverted L for the low bands. I remember that at the time Radio Tirana used to be a pain as it broadcast on 7065kHz, right in the middle of the 40m phone band and I leant how to zero beat a signal with this radio.

The Yaesu FR50 and it’s accompanying transmitter the FL50 were in my dads shack before the TS120 (above). Being an older radio, I seem to remember it was valved. I can’t remember the quality of the receiver as I was only very young when I used this. They do come up for sale every now and then. Unlike the TS120, this had AM so could be used to listen to the broadcast stations on high end of 40m and of course the AM stuff on top band.

Another Satellit from my collection, this is the 2000. It was a good, solid radio and performed very well. Is was a broadcast radio rather than a dx machine as it lacked SSB - although you could plug in an external BFO, if you had one. The sliders on these used to get very noisy and were not that easy to replace as you needed to remove a good portion of the radio to get to them. As a broadcast radio, it worked very well, and the massive rod antenna no doubt helped with the signals, although you could attach an external wire if necessary. The difficulty with this, and the other Satellits is their size, they are huge and heavy! Put one on your desk and you will find that you have lost most of the space on it. That said, they were built like tanks and were reliable except for the odd nuance, such as the sliders as mentioned earlier.

This is the FT101’B’, mine was blue, which was unusual for a ham rig. I had loads of QSO’s on this back in the mid 80’s (even then it was old!) although being a hybrid, quick band changes were not possible as the finals had to be plate and loaded, which took time as there was the preselector to peak, then tuning the plate and load for a dip whilst on low power and then final tuning at high power (if I remember correctly). Bit deaf on 10m - also had 11m as standard for some reason!

After a break of a few years I got back into radio and this was the first radio I used. This had the 10m crystals changed to 11m by the previous owner (a cb-er I think!) and had an intermittent audio fault on transmit - however CW worked without problem so this is the mode I used and came to love. I worked many, many countries with this radio, and it’s matching ATU. It also had transverters for 6, 2 and 70cms but I was unable to use these as I didn’t have the correct wiring or the 10m crystals.

The DX70 was the first radio I purchased new, and it did me proud for quite a time. I did miss some of the features that the larger radio’s had, such as proper narrow CW filters, rather then the audio filters the DX70 had. Still it was good fun and got me onto 6m for the first time.

The Satellit 1400 was a radio I had dreamed of owning since my early days as a listener. I remember reading ‘Shortwave magazine’ and ‘Practical Wireless’ back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and they often showed pictures of the reporters and their set up. One picture caught my eye, it was of a guy called Simon Hamer (from Wales I think) and he used a Satellit 1400. I looked and thought that the 1400 was a superb looking radio and he heard a lot of DX - it was then I decided that I would own one one day. Nice receiver, not the best but good, especially for a ‘portable’ - it’s a big radio so portable is a matter of opinion.

Unusual receiver the Satellit 600, it has a motor driven preselector. The motor could be switched off to allow manual adjustment which is just as well because the motor drive tends to tune it just off so requires manual peaking. It has a rich deep sound as is typical with the Satellit series. Was a respectable performer on AM and SSB, stable enough to allow digimodes to be decoded on a PC. I had this one for quite a while before parting with it to finance the next radio.

I had the HRO in the time between getting my class B license and getting my full license (a year) and I used it extensively on 80 and 160m where it worked like a dream. I used a 40m random wire with it, which no doubt helped! The HRO’s were a unique design which required coil packs to be changed when you wanted to change from one band to another. Quite a novel approach and cut down on the complexity of the front end of the receiver, and thereby reduced the cost. I had a full set of coil packs that took the HRO from 50kHz up to 30MHz. The graph on the front of the coil packs was used for determining frequency - you took the number indicated on the big dial and looked that up on the graph - not the easiest frequency display!

The IC756 came into my shack after the IC746 it came from a friend who had used it mobile and had worked a lot of DX on SSB. As a consequence it had filters for SSB - I was into CW so swapped them for narrow CW filters - the 756 had a drawback that you could only fit a very limited number of filters. The other problem is that the display gets blue lines after a while. Most 756’s now have this problem.

A shack in a box - transmits from 160m up to 2m at 100w in all modes, also has AF DSP, like the 756. I got the 746 after the DX70 and was impressed by it, however the downside is the bandscope is not real time, the rx is muted when it does a sweep, whereas the 756’s bandscope was free running all the time - great for spotting dx. I liked the 746 and have stuck with Icom ever since - going on to the 756 then the 756 pro that I use now (that has IF DSP - no expensive filters to buy!).

The Sony ICF2001D (or 2010 in USA) was a great radio. I owned it for a long time until it stopped working one day, the PLL died and could not be resurrected. This set travelled with me wherever I went and I heard so much on it. 32 memories, good filters, AM sync and switchable USB/LSB made this a real classic. Airband was not that great but better than not having it at all. Responded well to external antennas, wires of about 10m worked well but they were prone to static killing the front end.

This was the digital version of the Sony ICF7600, the 7600D. It was a great broadcast radio and a good dxer on MW. However trying to tune SSB was a bit hit and miss as it tuned in 5kHz steps and then had a ‘clarifier’ in the form of a thumbwheel on the side. There was no sideband selector so you had to learn to tune either above and clarify down or below and clarify up depending on which sideband you wanted. Also the clarifier did not change the frequency readout so you could be anything up to nearly 5kHz off the shown frequency. But as I said, for broadcast listening, it was a super radio.

The Sangean ATS803A came in many different guises, such as the Radio Shack DX440 and the Matsui MR4099 (I think) etc. All the same radio but with a different badge. Good radio but had some issues, such as ‘chuffing’ - the radio momentarily mutes the audio as you tune so if you are bandscanning it sounds like a train chuffing. Not the best for doing that kind of listening. These can be picked up quite cheaply now and as a bonus there are mods on the web to eliminate the chuffing and improve performance.

The Racal RA17 is a real classic. Used by the government, BBC  monitoring and many others it was, at the time, probably the best receiver available. It used the Wadley loop drift cancelling system so it was very stable and used a ‘film strip’ which had a length of 30 feet as the bandspread display so tuning was easy. These are commanding a high price these days but beware as some are suffering from old age and will need an overhaul to get them back to their former glory. One other word of advise, they are BIG - your desk will disappear when you put an RA17 on it! I had mine for a year or so but it was just too big for the available space.

The Codar CR70A was a radio I did not get on with, I think mine must have been faulty as I hardly heard anything on it (even with it’s outboard preselector). It’s a pretty basic valved receiver. It would be unfair for me to say it is particularly bad as I am sure my one was faulty, plus I have heard others give good reports on them. If you are thinking of buying one, I would check it on air first, just in case. 

Here is the Heathkit ‘Mohican’, another Iconic radio. The Mohican was offered as a kit (Heathkit were the manufacturers and they produced many kits from simple receivers to full blown transceivers and accessories). The thing with buying a radio that is made from a kit is that you have no idea how competent the person who constructed the kit was. A look inside the case should provide some answers - if it is well made, neat solder joints and tidy wiring, the chances are the person was a patient and competent constructor. Of course that may not be the case as I have seen some kits that look really untidy but work very well, and I have seen neat and tidy kits that dont!). Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware!) with any of these. The Mohican covered 500kHz-30Mhz and was ‘portable’ and had a massive built in whip. Performance was dependent on the skill of the constructor but they could perform quite well, especially given their age.

The Trio (later Trio Kenwood and finally just Kenwood) 9R59D was a very common receiver and even now there are many still around despite being nearly 40 years old. As with most of the receivers of this time it covered 500Khz-30MHz and had a seperate bandspread for the amateur bands. These were valve sets and the VFO used to drift as the set changed temperature. This was such a problem that some users modified their 9R59’s to use a screened semiconductor VFO which improved stability considerably. You should be able to pick up a decent one for about £50 or less. The one I owned did not have modifications to it and listening to SSB was dificult as I was constantly tuning to keep the signal readable. On AM broadcast it was better as the signals were not as affected by drift. They tend to lack sensitivity on the highest bands.

The Sony 7600 series were an extremely popular range of radio’s and I believe they are still in production (as the ICF 7600GR). This was about the first version (the 7600A, although the picture is of an 7600AW, they look the same). I used this radio for my first serious go at MW dxing with various loop antennas that I made (up to 1.5m square). I heard the USA and Canada many times with this one. The performance was very good, although tuning on SW was a bit tricky as the dial space was limited so you had to tune very slowly, and being analogue you were never quite sure what frequency you were on (this had to be checked by looking up the station you had heard and seeing what frequency it was on - not as easy as it sounds as there was no internet back then (and home computers were Commodore 64’s and ZX Spectrum’s) so we had to reply on publications like WRTH to give us the information we needed.