Roger G3XBM's (Mainly) Amateur Radio Blog

For a very long time, I have owned an SDR dongle. One of the things I really must do this next few weeks is to get this set-up.  My birthday...

When running a long wire (actually a short wire, HI) on 472kHz TX with my 12W output transverter, I used a simple ferrite rod ATU on the sha...

There is a common misconception that 472kHz ATUs have to be big. With low power this is not the case. With my 5W I have had no problems at a...

Until it started to misbehave recently, I have used the Elecraft T1 auto ATU with my 12yr old FT817 with good results. Its main use has bee...

This morning with my 20mW ERP on 500kHz I worked G3XIZ around 45km away on CW. Chris gave me 569 (on his meter) when using his loop antenna...

For some years now I have owned an Elecraft T1 auto-ATU which works very well with the FT817, especially with the FT817 interface cable w...

Today I made a start on improving my ERP on 137kHz and 500kHz. Firstly, I've bought a pile of Wima 1000V polypropylene capacitors from...

This morning I tidied up the arrangement to match my "in the air" wire loop antenna currently being used on 136kHz and 500kHz. The...

This evening, as an experiment, I rewound the tapped coil on on ferrite rod based table-top ATU for 500kHz using 0.56mm enamelled wire rathe...

This is a close up picture of my 500kHz ATU which consists of a ferrite rod with thin copper wire tapped at various points to which the ant...

Matching my antenna at 500kHz has been a bit hit and miss: my technique, if you can call it that, has been to match the antenna "by ear...