About M0EZP

Historic City of York, Northern England

Current QTH

My QTH is the historic City of York, England.  Locator Grid: IO93LW

Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor and commander of the Roman army in Britain, was proclaimed Emperor of Rome in this city in AD 306. After Roman rule, it became the capital city of the Kingdoms of Deira then Northumbria then Jórvíc until the unification of England.

Antennas

  • 10-40m Ciro Mazzoni Magnetic Loop
  • 20m dipole, 40m loaded dipole
  • 160m loaded whip
  • 6-2-70 co-linear
  • various single band HF whips for mobile use

Inverted-V cut for 40m
Inverted-L cut for 80m with optional base loading for 160m
Delta Loop cut for 20m

Commercial Equipment

  • Transceivers: Yaesu FT-990, FT-747GX, Kenwood TH-F7E, AKD 2001, Icom 2E, Standard C5900DE
  • Receivers: Yaesu FRG-7, Trio 9R-59DS
  • Filter equipment: Datong “Blue Box” RF Clipper, Datong FL3 AF Filter, NES 10-2 DSP, MFJ-1026 Noise Canceller
  • Other gear: Mirage B108 Linear, Racal CW keyer, MFJ-461 CW reader, Tiny SA spectrum analyser

Homebrew Equipment

  • Walford Sutton – 20w multiband, Sideband and CW transceiver
  • Walford Cam – 20w 160m AM transmitter
  • Walford Kingsdon – 5 Watt phone Sideband and CW transmitter (ex-G4EIE)
  • DF2FQ – 5w 6m transverter
  • Spectrum TA6SB 60w 6m Linear
  • Cumbrian Designs Frequency Counter
  • Z-Match ATU x2
  • L-Match ATU with rollercoaster

About Me

I have three children with families of their own. I’m now semi-retired and still work in my business. My career has been in business computing and systems design and I’m a chartered engineer.

My Radio Story

I grew up in Halifax, Yorkshire, about 5 miles from the BBC’s main medium wave transmitters for northern England at Moorside Edge (Pole Moor). BBC Radio 1 transmitted 200kw AM on 247m and Radio 4 was 400kW on 434m. As a child of 7 or 8 I would sometimes hear a faint chatter coming out of the toaster which was a combination of those BBC signals being rectified by toast crumbs!

With help from my Dad, I built my first crystal set, and then other crystal sets, using the metal springs of my bed as the aerial. If I woke in the night I would have a listen and hear such as Deutsche Welle through my Dad’s 600 ohm headphones.

Realising my interest, my Grandma gave me a valve table-top receiver when I was about 9. I soon got the set hooked up to my impromptu “aerial under the bed” and was curious the bit on the dial labelled ‘amateurs’ ; I stumbled across locals on ‘top-band’ (160 meters) who thankfully all used AM.

The set shown is slightly different to mine. This one is a Pilot Radio Company model 75 from Radio Workshop’s collection – well worth visiting their site.

My Pilot radio was a Model 754 which looked physically identical with the exception that it had four bands, two being short-wave and it spanned 15m-180m. It had valves with 12v heaters which were daisy chained and when one blew I found I couldn’t replace it. Sadly I got rid of the radio when I was 13 which I deeply regret as it was a ‘nice piece of furniture’ and I would have been able to repair it with what I learnt since then. Some photos I found on ebay of a more battered model 754 are below:-

Teenage years

G8CB, Harry Crewe at Ovenden Halifax, was the first amateur I heard on 160m. After realising that the disabled chap who ran a sweet shop near my Gran’s house at Illingworth, Halifax, had radio gear in the shop, I started chatting to him – that was G3MDW (Arthur Robinson at the Candy Cabin, Ogden). He put me in touch with Harry G8CB who encouraged me to have a go at the Radio Amateur Exam and to join Northern Heights ARS, of which Harry was Honourary President. The Club (G2SU) was based at a Pub near Ogden, Halifax, called the Peat Pitts which was since vastly extended and is now called The Moorlands. Alan G3TQA has put together an archive website for Northern Heights ARS with historical information and photos.

A newer valve radio built by Eagle International was bought and a 30-40m long-wire antenna which went between my house and a neighbour. Click here for Radio Museum Info. This was my first Short Wave communications receiver which was bought around 1973 and sold the year after.

The receiver had band-spread but wasn’t the easiest to use on amateur bands without finer calibration. However I did hear very distant ‘DX’ stations even with my aerial being the springs of my bed!

The following year I got a ‘proper’ radio – yes, valves were still the order of the day: a seven year old Trio 9R-59DS. Like the Eagle receiver, it was purchased  from Jim Fish (G4MH) who owned “The Ham Shack”, Chapel Hill, Huddersfield. Again calibration wasn’t great and so I modified it with a valve crystal calibrator which put heterodyne markers every 1MHz throughout the bands and then used bandspread to determine frequency.

A frequent visitor of Bruce Mitchell’s electronics shop in Pellon Lane, Halifax, ultimately I built the RSGB “Cadet” 3.5MHz Direct Conversion receiver and I was amazed it worked first time! The RF gain was pretty poor and even after a complete rebuild of the mixer/LPF stage it’s not the sharpest pencil in the box; however the buffered VFO was very stable.

The local hams became so familiar to me and yet I met very few in person. G6BX (Jack at Mountain, Queensbury), G3MDW (Arthur at the Candy Cabin, Ogden) and G4BIV (Frank near Elland) are sadly no longer with us. Arthur put me in touch with G8CB (Harry, at Ovenden). Harry encouraged me to take the City & Guilds Amateur Radio Exam which I did but it was quite a challenge at the age of 13. Here’s the December 1975 City & Guilds exam paper that I took. The three hour written paper scared me somewhat! I passed the electronics and technical section but failed the operating practices and license conditions section. I did however continue listening to radio hams from all over the world when background noise from domestic sources was near zero.

A comparative youngster at the time, G4EIE (Richard near Huddersfield) was quite interesting in his experimentation and on the basis of an explanation on the air as a SWL, I tried to build a 160m QRP transmitter he was using. My interest in amateur radio waned by the late 1970s as school exams and other teenage interests took hold.

Re-awakening of radio interest

After 20 years of peaceful slumber, my Trio receiver was pressed back into action briefly in 1999 after hearing that USAF recognisance overflies over Iraq could be heard around 21Mhz at night. I cleaned it up thoroughly with meths and a vac before daring to switch it on. Somewhat amazed, I found it still worked!

In 2003, Michael (M0APC) encouraged me and three other closet listeners (John, Pete and Derek) into taking the Foundation Licence exam in 2003 – we all passed! It’s a brilliant idea to revive the hobby and make it accessible to youngsters, who have the advantage of lots of ‘play time’ to learn. Soon afterwards we founded the Nestle Employees Radio Club in York (M0NUK).

On the air!

I equipped myself with a Yaesu FT-747GX transceiver for HF and an AKD-2001 transceiver for 2m. I built a home-brew Z-match ATU and put up some wire aerials at my old QTH in Brighouse, Yorkshire (grid IO93cr). The Foundation Licence proved to me that 10 watts is enough to work DX but getting through a pile up is a different matter. As an aside, getting through a pile-up in my view is a combination of a good antenna, crisp audio, clear speech and a bit more power does help. I entered and passed the Intermediate Exam in May 2004. G4EIE was very helpful in sending me the design for the QRP transmitter which I considered building as part of the Intermediate project. I ended up building a different project but contacting G4EIE had some positive unforeseen results – it encouraged Richard back onto the air after a few years and I gained a local radio friend too. I also joined the Halifax and District Amateur Radio Society (HADARS) – club call sign G2UG.

The Advanced Licence Exam was taken in June 2004 and I got the new Advanced Class call-sign M0EZP. Ironically much of my DX was worked as an M3 with only 10 watts. Increasing to full-power has been useful, particularly through the sun-spot minima of 2005/2006 but not essential by any means.

The first half dozen watts are what counts most!

During the summer of 2005, I started to build the Walford Electronics Sutton transceiver with associated linear amp and ATU. Since then I’ve added to the project so it now provides double-sideband and morse at 5-10w on 160, 80, 40, 20 and 15m bands. It taught me a lot and to start off with I was quite daunted by the task but Tim Walford’s design is well thought out, economical and well within the capabilities of those who’ve warmed up a soldering iron only on much simpler projects. I later added a CW board; notch-filter and a LED s-meter. After a power upgrade, the Sutton now transmits up to 20w and is about as tooled-up as possible although Tim calls it “the wooden Sutton”!

The construction bug also bit me again with 6m in mind and during the Summer of 2006 I built a 6m transverter; this was followed shortly after by a 60w 6m linear amplifier. Both constructions went well and harmonics suppression is good at better than -50dB out of each, however Classic FM on 101MHz is a challenge even then and RSGB’s EMC book recommends -80dB for 6m transmission!!

A prized possession of mine is an old Datong RF Clipper which cost me £4 in a junk sale shortly after getting my M3 Licence. Yes, it’s old and doesn’t look so smart but as an M3 it did sharpen up my audio well-enough to be heard by many DX stations and have a fair chance in a pile-up!

A lazy man’s stealth shack!

Stealth VHF Station in December 2005

A second station was been set up in the Dining Room for 2m operation, discretely packed in a drawer so that I can call in to local nets in my jim-jams if I’m being lazy…hi hi! The configuration makes use of a cheap PC PSU (under £10) to provide 12v to the linear and 2m transceiver. The black box you can see in the middle is a transmit/receive switch and power box. It has a PTT push button which operates a relay to separately trigger PTT on both the Mirage B108 linear (top left) and the Icom IC-2E transceiver (bottom left). It also has a voltage regulator on a heat sink bolted to the right hand side of the box to provide 9v to the transceiver. The B108 is rated at 80w but in this configuration it puts out about 12w.

Note: Most PC PSUs are typically marked “CE” but actually contravene RF emissions and often wipe out the lower bands (< 14MHz) with appalling noise. Using one of these PSUs might seem asking for trouble but it is quite acceptable for VHF/UHF work. Wanting to do the job right, I cleaned the PSU up with a RF filter mod.

Yaesu FT-990

My friend Tony G0DLX wanting to upgrade his shack meant that his Yaesu FT-990 had become available to buy. Yaesu FT990 ROM v1.2 - M0EZPThe FT-990 is an excellently built HF transceiver and a real joy to use. Its auto-tuner would match a bath tap if that was all that was available as an aerial! It did develop a problem a few months later with the 5v regulator however I was able to fix this without too much bother.

Sadly G0DLX became SK in Spring 2016. His skeds with myself and Richard GW4EIE (then G4EIE) however go on in memory through this recording Sunday-Sked-19May2013.mp3

My Technical Log 2007-2015

Construction

My interest was for many years construction and so most of my newer equipment is home-brew, such as a companion 20w AM transmitter for my Yaesu FRG-7 receiver. However components have got smaller, my eyesight less focused and I don’t now envisage further major construction projects.

Latest construction projects

New QTH

At the end of 2014 I moved into an apartment with no HF antenna opportunities. My good friend, now SK, Peter G4NTA lent me a mag loop antenna that he had made with a remote controller driving the variable capacitor. I managed a few QSOs but my biggest problem was domestic RF noise.

Six years later I moved to a ‘normal’ house in York, 45 miles to the East. I am now restricting my antenna options to loft locations partly because I need to be stealthy here but also because osteoarthritis has become an issue and fixing wind damaged aerials and supports every winter is less attractive, hi!