G3TFX

About 10 years ago Richard G3TFX told my wife to get me to hospital quick. His decision probably saved my life. The photo shows him with me having a chat about 6 months after coming out of hospital. 

Looking busy

Earlier today, I was sent this photo of G3TFX as he was in 1974.  

I speak to him on 2m FM most weeks.

He is using a Marconi 995 signal generator. These were common in the early 1970s. They drifted a lot and we had to wait hours for these to settle down!

G3TFX

One of my old work colleagues moved to our village a few months ago. Here he is on his radio. We went to his house today as his XYL was celebrating her 70th birthday.

Visit by Richard G3TFX

An old work friend, Richard G3TFX, called in today. He stopped for a cup of tea, before rushing to catch a bus.

I owe my life to him as it was he who told my XYL to get me to A&E when I had my stroke 4 years ago. I was in hospital for 3.5 months. Had I collapsed at home, I might be dead now.

Visit from old work colleague

Yesterday, I had a visit from an old work colleague G3TFX.  As well as a good chat, it also gave us a chance to check the sensitivity of his FT817.

G3TFX visit

Just before lunch, Richard G3TFX called in on his bike. He was on the way to his granddaughter's birthday party in the village.

This is a photo of us in my shack. Richard is on the left. He is a regular visitor.

It was Richard's alertness that probably saved my life a year ago. I shall always owe him a debt of gratitude. Richard has recently returned to the hobby. He is usually on 40m SSB, but is fighting a very high noise level on RX. Already he has worked some impressive DX.

Path profiles using Google Earth

My thanks go to Richard G3TFX for showing me this Google Earth feature, which may be of interest to VHF/UHF/SHF, microwave, nanowave and SOTA enthusiasts. I had no idea you could do this.

Using the ruler tool (in the menu at the top) in Google Earth click between two places. A line appears together with a distance measurement. Save this as a temporary file in Google Earth. Right click on this file in Google Earth and choose "show elevation profile" and a path profile between the 2 spots appears.

Google Earth path profile

The image above (screenshot from Google Earth - Google copyright acknowledged - will remove if a problem, but you are getting free publicity!) shows the non line-of-sight path between Burwell and the village of Stow-cum-Quy that I managed to span recently with my 481THz QRSS3 beacon using 100mm optics and a TX power of around 0.5W.

This does not appear to take any account of the Earth's curvature, so is probably only useful for relatively short distances. Does anyone know how to factor in this?

Looks a useful facility to me for seeing how close to line-of-sight a moderate length path is.

73s
Roger G3XBM