EI7KN

My name is David and I have been a licenced amateur radio operator for more than thirty years. I live in County Galway, which is on the West coast of the Republic of Ireland.

I’m keen on digital voice modes, including C4FM/Wires-X, DStar and to a lesser extent DMR. I also enjoy AllStar.

I have many unerected aerials which I keep on promising myself that I’ll get around to some nice installation work, but yet another summer seems to pass me by.

It is perhaps because of this that I enjoy WSPR / FT-8 / JS8Call, along with Ham Radio Email using WinLink Express.

Kit, gear and yet more

Too Much Stuff

Like most hams I have purchased a lot of kit and have sold / upgraded some of it.

I have two favourite transceivers are an old Icom IC-7000, which I consider to be years ahead of its time. It’s a small mobile shack-in-a-box HF/VHF/UHF All-Mode radio which I regularly use for FT8 using the Digi-4 interface from:-

https://xggcomms.com/

My other radio of choice is the Yaesu FT-991A, which is a desktop shack-in-a-box HF/VHF/UHF All-Mode transceiver. This is often left set on EI2KMR repeater in Galway

I have a couple of radios which I use for /Portable operations and these are the Yaesu FTDX10 and an Icom IC-705.

The most used aerials are a pair of Yaesu ATAS-120A Screwdrivers and these are often set on a specific Sirio Mag-Mount, the Sirio MAG145-PL SO239. N.B. It is ESSENTIAL that the model is supplied with the PVC sticker and that this sticker MUST be applied as per the instruction sheet.

The FTDX 10 natively supports tuning of the screwdriver aerial, whilst the IC-705 requires the use of an MFJ 1925 interface box.