About G4ILO
My name is Julian Moss. My age is now 54. I live in Cockermouth, a
small market town in the north-west of England, in the county of
Cumbria, on the edge of the English Lake District.
I was married in August, 2002. My wife Olga, is from Kharkov
in Ukraine. We both
work in computers, and first met via the
Internet, not ham radio.
I first got my ham license in 1974, as G8ILO. This was a class B, 144MHz and up, license. I upgraded to class A, all bands, in 1979, and got my current call G4ILO. But my interest in radio goes back way beyond that. My late father was a hi-fi enthusiast in the 1960s when the cheapest way to get a stereo amplifier was to build it yourself. As a child, I was fascinated by this equipment - the glass tubes with their strange internal construction, the small resistors with their coloured bands - and this sparked my interest. For years I built radios and listened on the short wave bands, never having any particular desire to go on the air myself. Even today, I spend more of my radio time tinkering or listening than operating.
When I do go on
the air, I enjoy a good conversation. I'm happy when, at the end
of a contact, people make a point of saying how much they've
enjoyed the chat. Sadly, much of the operation today seems to
have degenerated into a form of electronic lotto. It's nice to
make a DX contact in order to see how far 5 watts will go, but I
can't see the point in spending hours in pileups just so I can
tick a country or prefix off a list. I think it is a shame that
so much emphasis is placed on the competitive aspects of the
hobby instead of the joys of learning about radio and talking to
different people from all over the world. If I want to achieve
anything at all with this website, I want to show that it's
possible to have fun with radio even if you can only use low
power and a small antenna.
My radio station
My station is 100% home-built, 100% QRP and 100% Stealth, and occupies a corner of my home office. By "stealth" that I mean that I have no visible amateur radio antennas at my house.
My transceiver is an Elecraft K2 which I built from a kit. It has all the options installed (except the 100W PA) and delivers 10W output on all HF bands. As many will know by now, the K2 is a superb performer on both receive and transmit, outperforming many commercial rigs. After I built the Elecraft K2 kit I wrote a review of it which may be of interest if you're thinking of building one.
The K2 is powered by a home-built power supply
which is built into a matching EC2 enclosure from Elecraft. You
can see them in the photo on the right (click on the image to see
an enlarged version.)
My antenna is an approximately 5m x 6m loop run round the perimeter of my attic. It is fed in the centre of one 5m side using a 4:1 balun and connected by a short ( < 2.5m ) length of RG-213 to my transceiver situated in the room below it. This antenna can be tuned by the K2's built-in tuner (KAT2) on 10m - 30m. I operate QRP: 10W pep on SSB and 5W on CW and data, in order to avoid RFI problems. Despite the apparent handicaps of using QRP with a loft antenna, my station puts a good signal into Europe and I have made DX contacts as far afield as South America almost 11,500km away!
Above it is a Ten-Tec 1208 6 metre transverter, which was also built from a kit. It runs about 8W maximum output, so it is also QRP. My 6m antenna is a wire delta loop, also in the loft. With this I have made SSB contacts over 1500km, with good reports.
My other radios are a 20m MFJ Cub transceiver, built from a kit, and a Yaesu FT-817. I also have an Elecraft T1 miniature autotuner kit (and the FT-817 remote control adapter) and like to operate out of doors when I get the chance (and the weather is warm enough!)
Modus operandi
I'm most often on the air during weekday afternoons, while taking a break from work. My preferred mode of operation is PSK31 so look for me around 14.071MHz, or around 28.120 MHz if ten metres is open, between 1400 and 1600 UTC. I also like to use MFSK and Olivia. All of these are excellent modes for use with low power. With only 5 watts of output from the K2 I have had solid contacts with stations on the other side of the Atlantic, and have even had Stateside DX reply to my CQ calls. I do work SSB and CW too.
The best software for PSK31 and other sound card data modes without a doubt is MixW. This superb program caters for every data mode you are ever likely to want to use. It supports computerized control of your transceiver (CAT) and has a good built-in logging capability, plus interfaces to add-ins like callsign databases. It supports SSTV, CW transmit and receive and even SSB, with the facility to use WAV files as recorded voice messages. The CW decoder works very well especially on fast, machine-sent Morse, and I often use it to work stations during contests. Powerful macro features allow you to do things like click a button to move a CW or data signal to the center of the receiver passband and select a narrow filter. A recent innovation is the ability to send an electronic QSL instantly from the program.
I don't often say this about ham radio software, but MixW is well worth the $50 asking price. It must be good - it comes from Ukraine, as does my wife!