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Tydraig.Com

A random collection of objects and subject I am interested in… or as my wife

would say obsessed with !!


Amateur Radio

My Transceiver History

The very first thing I did as soon as I got my foundation licence was to acquire a cheap hand held, I bought my self a copy of The Rig Guide from the RSGB to see what I should be paying and searched Ebay and found a second hand Yaesu VX-2e. it was good enough to get on the air without too much in the way of antenna’s etc. Although the Yaesu VX-2e only has a 1W output on 70cm and 1.5W on 2m on the internal battery it was sufficient to get me onto to the local 70cm repeater GB3CR without too much of a problem.

My very first QSO was with Rod GW7TKZ and Arthur G7BQY on this little radio and it was great to make contact with them at last, in fact it was a great sense of achievement

After this initial contact I wanted more so after a bit of research with my colleague Ian M0ODD, we both decided to go for an all rounder and made our minds up to go for the Yaesu FT-817ND. Luck was on my side I found an immaculate FT-817ND with the BHI NEDSP 1061 board fitted on Ebay and when it arrived I opened it up to find it was also fitted with a collins SSB filter.

The next weekend Ian and I went up to Norbreck Castle Exhibition Centre, Blackpool for the next available amateur rally and spent a small fortune on new gear.

Ian managed to get his Yaesu FT-817ND at the rally and we both bought the following items.

Watson W-2000 tri-band home base antenna

Watson Multi-ranger 9 mobile whip

LDG Z-817 auto tuner

And an assortment antenna parts to experiment with in the coming weeks.

I have now got my Watson W-2000 installed and I find it is great at my QTH for 2m/70cm but at this time it is still needs to be raised a bit higher. I also managed to get an end-fed long wire across the garden at about 12ft high into a 9:1 balun and in turn into my Z-817 auto tuner. I have managed some QRP Hf contacts on 20m into Bulgaria, Ukraine & Italy so I am quite pleased with that I just want to extend the long wire around my garden a bit more.... but that will have to wait until I can pack the wife off somewhere for a day or two..

I know the Yaesu FT-817ND is a portable rig, but I was getting frustrated by having to disconnect everything each morning to put it in the car before leaving for work. So I got the Rig Guide out again and decided on getting myself a Yaesu FT-7800E Dual Band 2m/70cm.

I had decided to finance this purchase with the proceeds of the sale of some of the receivers I have mentioned in my other pages, the Pro-2045, DX 394 provided sufficient funds to buy the FT-7800E again off Ebay again this was an immaculate radio. the guy I bought it off even delivered it to work the next day at Runcorn for me.

I have to say that it is quite a nice radio, it’s got good audio and the advantage of picking yet another Yaesu is that the programming is a piece of cake for all the local repeaters using G0LFP’s CSV file generator FTB csv generator. The programs I find that work for me to squirt the csv files into the different Yaesu radio’s are listed below, remembering each radio needs it’s own particular interface to the PC

VX-2e uses VX-2 Programmer by RT Systems

FT-817ND uses FT-817 Commander by Simon Brown HB9DRV

FT-7800E uses FTB 7800 by G4HFO software

I then moved up to a Yaesu FT-857D, which gives me a better power output, I used my full foundation licence allocation of 10 watts from my home QTH.

I swapped my FT817ND for it as well as the Z817 tuner, the FT-857D came with an AT-200Pro Autotuner by LDG.

Following the great tradition of the radio amateur ethos, John Bellis 2W0OSG has kindly donated one of his Yaesu FT-101 transceivers to me.

It’s just another little project for me to play with as it needs a small bit of work to it to get it back to full working condition

I managed to get hold of an Yaesu FT-102 which is in a nice condition, these are what I consider to be a real radios, in that you do not have a menu driven set up and you have to learn how to use it, the audio output on this radio is superb.

I was able to give the TX side of this a bit of use after I successfully acquired my intermediate licence at 50W. Unfortunately I had to let this radio go to make room in the shack for a new acquisition.

I went to the NARSA rally at Blackpool again this year andPicked up a Wouxun KG-UVD1P Dual band hand held.

I wanted something with a little more punch then the VX2R that I already have and for the price of £89 it was a bargain.

The programming of the unit is best done with the aid of a computer otherwise you will have to try and work out what is going on from the manual, which is a little difficult to understand.

I think it is a nice package and will be great fun when out and about during the summer.

Now to my latest HF/50MHz Transceiver the Yaesu FT-950.

The FT-950 has now taken over as my main shack radio from the FT-857D. I love this rig, it will take me a while learning how to use all of it’s features but I am absolutely made up with its performance and I am just looking forward to spending some time figuring out all the bells and whistles on it.

I have added a few extras to the FT-950 to enhance it. It now has an RFSpace IF-2000 interface board and a Yaesu DVS-6 Voice module installed.

Taking advantage of the recent Notice of Licence Variations for the 472Khz and 5 MHz Bands I have modified the FT-950 with the Mars/Cap mod opening up the TX frequencies to allow transmission on 5MHz

I also have a FH-2 remote keyboard to finalise the modifications.

Map

The latest addition to my ever growing collection of transceivers is the Yaesu ftm-400de which my xyl bought me for Christmas this year.

I have been hankering after an APRS capable rig for some time & this one really took my fancy.

The ftm-400de is also one of the latest “Fusion” C4FM digital radios from Yaesu, luckily we have a Fusion repeater being GB3MN over in Stockport so I think I will get some use out of it on my travels to work in Runcorn.

I bought the RT systems ADMS-M400 programming kit for it, it really make life easy when setting up the frequencies I want and the radio options.

I cant wait to get out on the road with this radio and see what the new world of APRS opens up for me.