World Radio TV Handbook 2021
Daimon Tilley G4USI
Wireless.
Practical
like mine to enter the hobby will, typically, be borne by parents, so needs to be in reach of birthday and Christmas present budgets.
Of course, it wasn’t always like this. Trace the hobby back to its early days, and much equipment was home made using basic, often scavenged components, making cost a bit less of an issue. Or, for those coming into the hobby post-war, there was a wide selection of government-surplus gear available. Despite the (very welcome) range of brand new and high-end equipment, though, it is still possible to achieve a good shack for relatively low cost.
But there are other reasons for operating on a budget. It can be rewarding and fun! There is also a spirit of recycling, giving renewed life to old equipment that might either just sit around under a shack desk somewhere, be broken for parts, or worse still, find its way to landfill.
Take my own shack, as an example. I am fortunate enough to live comfortably and, if I wished, I could spend a lot more money than I do on shiny new equipment, and on a couple of occasions I succumbed. But as it stands at the moment, I have a shack capable of operating well on all bands from 160m to 70cm, on voice, CW, digital modes and satellites with only one ‘new’ commercial transceiver (a handheld) purchased by me, and every antenna home-made. Most of the gear is second-hand, some of it vintage, and some of it home-built from kits or scratch.
So, in this series I want to cover the following areas:
• VHF/UHF transceiver/transverter options.
• VHF/UHF antennas – home made.
• Getting on HF with 100 watts – good used rigs and where to buy.
• Getting on HF with 10 watts or less – QRP options, commercial, kits and home made.
• HF antennas that are simple and cheap to make
• Antenna Tuning Units – do we need them? Buy, build or make from scratch?
• A general coverage receiver – used, SDR units, the worldwide web.
• Shack accessories – Power supplies, SWR
meters, antenna analysers and switches.
• Computing power! A new lease of life for your old machine, second-hand units and the Raspberry Pi.
• CW keys – buying used or build your own for free.
• Round-up and summary. What new options have presented themselves since the series started? What have we learnt?
Sources of Budget Equipment
There are three main routes into budget equipment. First, you can buy new, cheap equipment, with basic facilities but more than adequate to get you on the air. Second, you can buy used, older equipment. I find that there is often little savings on used equipment just a year or two old. Residual values seem quite high, so I tend to look for equipment a decade or more old. Often this will not have the bells and whistles, but may, depending on age and brand, be of better, more robust quality than cheap new equipment. Finally, you can elect to build your own, perhaps from a kit of parts, or by assembling ready-made boards into a case.
We will examine all of these options over the course of the series, but let’s start by taking a quick peek inside my own shack, and my son’s, Josh M7JOT − what have we got, and what did it cost?
The G4USI/M7JOT Shack
What I propose to do here is list the main equipment that Josh and I use in the same categories I have listed above. This will allow me to set out, quickly and easily, what is possible in these categories, to give an overview, and then in the following articles go into greater depth and more options.
So, briefly, by category:
VHF/UHF Transceivers
• Kenwood TS-700 all-mode 2m transceiver – used, £80
• Yaesu FT-1802M FM mobile transceiver – Josh, used £80
• Baofeng GT3-TP 2m/70cm handheld – Josh, new £32
• Yaesu FT-70D 2m/70cm handheld with C4FM – new £170
• Trio TR-2300 FM portable rig – owned for over 40 years – about £50 now
VHF/UHF Antennas
(all home made)
• 2m 5/8-wave ground plane antenna from a
cheap mobile whip and scrap, £10
• Dual-band Slim Jim made from spare 450Ω window line and PVC waste pipe, Free!
• Handheld dual-band Yagi for satellite work, about £35
Getting on HF with 100 Watts
Nothing at the moment! I did have a Yaesu FT891 – previously my most expensive item of equipment at about £600. It was good performer, but I got really frustrated with how all the things I wanted to change were buried in menu structures, so I moved to the SDR below, allowing me to access pretty much any frequently used setting with a single click of the mouse.
Getting on HF with 10 to 45 Watts or less
• A home-made SDR transceiver covering 160m to 6m, with 10 watts out, built to his own design by a local amateur, £250
• If I want to up the power a bit, I have a good Chinese design amplifier for 80m through 10m that will put out 45 watts from a 5 watt input – the MX-P50M – new £125
• A 3dB attenuator, to drop the SDR power to 5 watts for the amplifier. Home-made, cost about £10
• The Xiegu X5105 QRP transceiver – an excellent field radio or for use at home – all HF bands 160 through 6m, and modes, 5 watts out, internal battery and internal auto ATU, used for £300
• Homebrew uBitx HF transceiver (version 4), 10 watts out on 160-10m, new kit £100 approx. from HF Signals.
• Home-brew QCX 40m CW rig, from QRPLabs, new kit £50
• A variety of simple and cheap home-brew CW rigs
HF Antennas
• A homebrew G5RV antenna, cost about £30 for the wire and insulators
• A homebrew multi-band vertical for 80m, 40m, 30m, 20m and 15m, made from a 10m fishing pole and wire (with some help from nearby trees), cost around £50, including wire.
Antenna Tuning Unit
• MFJ-949D Deluxe Versa-Tuner. Used (from a charity shop) £50
General coverage receivers
• Kenwood R-1000 Communications Receiver, used £60
In Summary
So, in this brief tour of what I have planned, what have we learned so far? Well, we have seen it is possible to get on the air for just over £30 with a new transceiver, and to work through satellites for just £35 more and a bit of DIY. That is the two main VHF/UHF bands covered. At HF the choices become a bit wider, and typically more expensive, and we delve into both of these areas in the coming months, plus more.
But the key bit of information to take away is that the hobby can be as cheap, or as expensive, as you wish – there really is a route into the hobby for all budgets. In my case, everything you see listed above comes to less than £1,800. Now I appreciate that, totalled up, that will not be everyone’s idea of a budget setup, but there is a lot of redundancy here. There are two or three of most things, and they have been accumulated over time. Bear in mind that a single top-flight HF rig from the ‘big three’ will set you back more than £3,000. If I pared my gear back to a single capability on HF/VHF/UHF, then I hope you can see that a well-equipped shack can indeed be delivered on a budget.
Where to buy? Well there are many options here. If you want to buy new cheap equipment from China for VHF/UHF, then you can choose from some of the advertisers in this magazine, or from online shopping and auction sites.
Second-hand gear can come from a number of sources. This might be word of mouth through friends in the hobby and local clubs or from the small ads of radio magazines.
Alternatively, many of the larger (and some smaller) dealers have a range of used equipment, or when restrictions are eased, you can shop at rallies. Other sources include online auction sites and social media.
I have personally brought quite a bit of used gear through Facebook, either through special interest groups, e.g. the Xiegu groups, or through Facebook Marketplace. There are two or three specific UK-wide Facebook groups for buying and selling used amateur radio gear too. The internet is really your friend here.
Clearly if you are buying from a reputable dealer, you can usually buy with confidence. If you are buying privately, just be careful. In my experience, amateurs are generally honest folk and will tell you the ‘warts and all’ of what they are selling. Just be a little wary of people selling gear who are not amateurs. In many cases they will be genuine, but they are likely to be selling untested equipment that they don’t know how to use – these might include people doing house-clearances or relatives of deceased radio colleagues. It never hurts to ask a seller for their callsign when making an enquiry.
I hope you join me for the next instalment in two months’ time, when we will take an indepth look at getting on the air on VHF/UHF. Until then, start looking for a bargain!
BIG ANTENNAS: Justin Johnson G0KSC reports: “Every now and then, a really special antenna system gets installed and usually it is a result of desire, commitment and dedication of the station owner. is one of these guys.
“Several years ago, Kari installed 8 x 18el X-pols (9v/9h) for 144.146MHz. Impressed by their stability and being able to use them in all weathers, he asked InnovAntennas to produce similar, this time for 50MHz.
“The photo shows his new array. InnovAntennas supplied the antennas, cabling and power dividers. The H-frame and guying were all prepared and installed by Kari and his team.
“The system looks impressive but once you factor that those booms are 10m long and on a cross boom of over 21m wide, you begin to realise the work that had gone into this system. “Congratulations Kari, another Big Gun joins the 6m band party!” https://tinyurl.com/y38ay4l9