Welcome to G0DUI

How I looked back then..,.

On the key in 1986. The old, grey thing is the club rig, a KW2000B.

Thanks to those good guys at the Moorlands and District Amateur Radio Society (MADARS) who ran the R.A.E. courses back in those days, I was first licensed in February 1983 with the old 'class B' call sign of G6THO and, subsequently, I passed the Morse test to gain my 'class A' in December of 1985.

I was an active member for many years serving, as Club Secretary on several occasions, and gained a great deal of pleasure from eventually doing my bit for the hobby and teaching several R.A.E. classes in the early 90's.

Times change and life moves on and so, probably for financial reasons, I slowly dropped out and, according to the old log book, operations (and my license) ceased around February of 1993.

And now...

APT 137Mhz NOAA Satellites in 2012. The old, grey thing is, sadly, me!

Thanks to a bit of bating from the wife, and a really good friend who should know better at his age, I've recently rediscovered the fascination of R.F. and decided to take a look at what the modern era can offer.

It all started when that same old friend turned up at the house with a classic Yaesu FRG-7700, one of the "must have" gadgets of my early teens, and asked "can you make any use of this?". This was swiftly followed by a new fangled gadget called an SDR... more of which you can find on the SDR Dongle page.

So, brand new licence in hand, I'm off on the adventure once again and looking forward to having a bit of fun.

Hopefully, these pages will tell the story of what we get up to and how it all develops.

Recent Activity

Working Mike, ZS6IA in Kempton Park, 25km East of Johannesburg on 28.510MHz

I know I shouldn't keep going on about it but honestly, operating H.F. from rural South West France is a real pleasure and a delight. Conditions on 10 and 15 have not been at all good this week but even so, today I had to cope with a pile up!

Now I don't know about you but, whenever I get more than one station replying to a C.Q., that's what I call a pile up. Today I worked Germany, UK, Brazil, Netherlands, Isle of Man, Sicily and South Africa, all off just a couple of CQ calls on 10Mtrs.

What's even better, my buddy Rick, G6VGC, in Uttoxeter came back to one of the CQ's along with a Papa Delta. The QSB was a bit severe at times but, never the less, good QSOs all round.

The plan is to make the FT-817 accessible via "the net" for remote operation when back in the U.K. but it's looking unlikely this trip. I'll just have to come back sooner than I planned for my next fix of H.F.

Check out the Picard Triple for a few more station details for F/G0DUI.

Homebrew Dual Band Dipole for 2 and 70

My low cost, homebrew dipole for 2Mtrs and 70cm mounted at the back of the garage

A while back I decided to build a homebrew dual band dipole for 2Mtrs and 70cm.

Following quite a bit of research, and more than one failed attempt, I decided to modify a design I quite liked but couldn't get to work properly on UHF.

The result is a really nice, sleek and effective dual band dipole that is performing well beyond my expectations.

I'm about to build another for Dad so I'll do my best to document it and publish the design data for anyone who is looking for an extremely low cost dual band antenna, ideal for both home and portable use.

MB7IVT - Allstar VHF Gateway

MB7IVT/G0DUI AllStar Node Stack

Having been running an AllStar micro-node for several months, in the middle of 2016 I decided to go the whole hog and host a V.H.F. AllStar R.F. Gateway. MB7IVT is up and running on 145.2875MHz with a CTCSS access tone of 103.5Hz. The gateway is permanently connected to HUBNet, a really good AllStar network regularly populated by a number of stations from around the world.

Thanks to Steve, M0HOY, for hosting the HUBNet servers and to Peter, G7RPG, for supplying the hardware.

Follow the links to find out more about more about AllStar and HUBNet and why not give it a try for yourself.