Rarely active on the HF bands due a complete lack of interest and general disgust in the operating practices of a large majority of so called European 'DX' operators, who can make the simple task of working a rare station and turn it into nothing short of Chaos !!

If i do decide to take the risk and put out a CQ call i will nearly always be on CW or PSK, SSB is too much like hard work, most of the gear here is from Kenwood, the amplifiers are not normally turned on anymore as i enjoy QRP operating, that said i am in no rush to sell any of my gear, so be sure when one of our friends from the African continent e-mails you saying they are me with a price you just cannot say NO too, its not going to be me !!!! :-))))

I leave a small SDR receiver on 24/7 on either 40m or 30m normally with a 160/80/40m vertical or if there is any bad weather around (Lightning, not something i like) i switch to a dipole and keep my fingers crossed, or if its like this storm which we had over the house, i turn everything off !!

This cheap little SDR rx runs 24 hours a day and has never let me down or given me any problems (i do not use a preamplifier on this receiver and the signal reports it uploads to the RBN are very close to what i see here on a conventional HF rig) for a dual-band 40/30m rx it is just superb (you just need to move a jumper to change bands) i do not understand why more guys do not run these and uploads spots to the RBN cluster, you have an internet connection 24hrs a day you have already paid for !! so why not make the most of it, you already have an antenna for most bands, all you need to do is spend fifty pounds for one of these receivers and buy the software from Alex and thats it !!!

Below my bandpass filter i use when i have the rx on 40m, i have run 2.5Kw on 30m, the same on 80m and the SDR rx does not see me, even beaming an 7 element monobander yagi for 10m towards the vertical with an ERP of over 10Kw the SDR rx does not flinch one bit, impressive little toy.

If you need a QSL card for a particular award let me know via e-mail and i will be glad to send you one via the Buro