Month: September 2015
Gerry Openshaw G2BTO
Sad to hear today of the passing of Gerry Openshaw G2BTO o 6th September 2015.
A great guy who I met many times back in the 70’s. Gerry had a secret background, he worked at Bletchley Park during the war and played a vital role in the codebreaking and monitoring of radio traffic during the war.
In 1971 when I got my Amateur Radio Licence Gerry visited my house and inspected my station. He could be seen driving around Bolton in his yellow GPO van searching for pirates on Topband in those days. Gerry was active on the air until a few years ago on the 1963 net on Topband on Sunday mornings. I always enjoyed listening to the net.
Excerpt from my old log book showing the time when Gerry called me on topband to tell me he was on his way to inspect my station shortly after I got my licence!
Here is an interesting program that was shown on TV with Gerry Openshaw about half way through.
G8AMU VHF / UHF Receiver
Back in the 1980’s I built a receiver based on the G8AMU design taken from the Radio Communication Handbook. You can see this in the construction part of my blog. It worked really well at the time and still have the receiver. Earlier this week I received an e mail message from Andy…
I have just bought from a chap local to me in Worthing a VHF/UHF all band receiver. Doing some research and looking at the construction, I dug out one of my early RSGB handbooks. Guess what, it was in there and designed/built by G8AMU. After doing search on web, with little luck, it came up with your call sign. Looking at your site saw that you had built one!.
This one judging by the photos in the handbook is actually G8AMUs. He lived at Horley, just down the road from me when I was 18!
Had couple of minor faults, dry joints, but now is working very well, actually surprised how good the sensitivity and stability is.
73
Andy G3UEQ
My reply…
I remember looking at the original receiver when it was in Radio Communication. It was a great project to build back in those days! When I built mine I made some changes and decided not to use the AM part of the receiver and instead built an SSB board using the SL1600 chips. I could never get it to look like the original with my ‘crude’ workshop facilities, but I still have it and it still works!
Can you send me some photos of your receiver Andy? It would be amazing if the one you have is the original!
Andy sent me some photos of the receiver…
It is in fact the original G8AMU receiver as shown in black and white in the Radio Communication Handbook. I was quite amazed when I saw the photos of a piece of radio history.
144Mhz Activity Contest
On Tuesday it was the 144Mhz activity contest, so instead of sitting in my shack I went out to some of the favourite sites in IO83RO and IO83SO which is on the side of Winter Hill. There I found Mick M0ICK and Keith G8HXE set up for portable operation.
Keith uses a Yaesu FT817 with a Microwave Modules Linear fed into a home made five element beam.
Mick uses a very impressive portable set up with an Icom 7100 and a lovely home made beam on a huge mast.
G4AQB - Analogue Native 