Worked All Britian Square: ST23 (Book number 19357)
LOTW and eQSL (AG) user
Please no paper QSL
QTH and Local Area:
I am located in Bridgwater, about 30 miles southwest from Bristol.
Some light industry here, large distribution warehousing and a couple of nuclear power plants.
EDF Energy are building the first NEW nuclear power plant in the UK for almost twenty years, right here.
I work in the nuclear industry as a Senior Engineer (Contamination & Clearance +Nuclear Waste Assay).
Radio Station M1BJR:
My absolute favorite pastime is DX on 10m SSB, this is where I spend 75% of my time.
For a modest station at only 10m above sea level, this band offers me the best compromise between performance and investment.
DXCC count is up to around 150 as of May 2013, almost all on 10m SSB with less than three hours per week operational.
1) 40m horizontal loop, 450 Ohm ladder feeder into "Balun Designs" 4:1 balun and tuned via LDG AT-600Pro Auto-tuner.
2) 10m 3ele Loop Fed Array@ 30' Click the logo below. An extremely QUIET antenna for the urban environment.
This is down to the radiation pattern, almost no lobes below the array or off to the sides mean less industrial hash.
My base radios are Flexradio Flex-3000, Yaesu FT-100 and a Kenwood TS590.
Legal power available from the fabulously easy to use ACOM1000 (Vine Antennas).
Studio microphone is by HEIL, the ex-Goldline 'PR-20', wired direct to the rig.
The Flex software provides a ten band graphic equaliser, TX width and compression tools.
Below is the little blue Flex-3000. It's operated by a laptop running Flexradio Power SDR 2.6.4 software.
Below is the Power SDR software from Flexradio. This is how you operate the radio.
The brick wall filtering on this SDR has to be heard to be believed. Great dynamic range circa 90dB.
Rivals most radios in its price point, but you have to be happy operating computers :)
Other Hobbies & Interests:
Radio Control R/C aircraft, mostly big sport gliders. Slope soaring local hills and sea cliffs is my favourite pastime.
I do a little digital photography with CanonDSLRs butam not that great. My 3yr old son is my favorite subject :)
Also I enjoy cars and everything about them, including the occasional driving day at a race circuit like Castle Combe.
Current garage holds 2013 Mercedes E-Class for work-horse, and 2011 Renault-Sport Megane RS250 CUP for fun.
73' from Steve.
