My Life In Amateur Radio Mike Stewart G4RNW

We welcome Mike Stewart, G4RNW, as a new member. Mike is also a member of Edgware and District Radio Society, G3ASR. Here he tells us how he started his journey into amateur radio.

During the years after WW11, life was fairly austere. Many items, particularly luxuries and toys etc, were in short supply – the country had no currency to spare for imports, and many items such as petrol, food and confectionary, were still strictly rationed. So imagine my excitement as an eleven year old therefore, when sometime in 1946 I was presented with a kit to build a crystal set – my very own personal radio!

It comprised various metal strips which one screwed to a pre-prepared stiff card base. On one strip there was a circular ring in which sat the crystal and on another, was a little sort of ‘nodding donkey’ with a piece of wire dangling (The Cat’s Whisker) which one gently touched onto the crystal. From there the strip was connected to a coil which one tuned with another strip which acted as a slider across the top of the coil. But it worked! I could clearly hear the BBC Home Service on about 340 metres (They hadn’t invented MHz yet) The aerial (pre antennas) an indeterminate length of bell-wire, trailed all round the lounge wall and into the hallway and the earth connection was secured to the gas pipe (Yes – I know!)

I soon tired of this and with the advice of a friend I duly substituted a 2 volt 4 x pin triode valve, an HL2 and I found that it actually worked without HT assistance. However, I still had this seemingly incurable problem of completely eliminating other stations. I had not heard of reactance at this time. In time I duly added a second valve, an LP2 and with the assistance of a little high tension I could actually drive a loudspeaker.

In time the novelty of this wore off. I did not know how to proceed any further in acquiring any further knowledge and thereby improving its performance, plus my late father’s discouragement in my interest in this ‘Time wasting’ project, caused me to drop out of the hobby for the time being.

Many years later, in 1978, when on holiday in Rome, my wife and I were approached during a visit to the Vatican, by an American couple Sid and Norma, who on overhearing English voices discussing the exhibits, thought that they would like to make our acquaintance. We got on fine from the start, had lunch together and spent the next few days in each other’s company, enjoying the sights of Rome. During our various conversations, Norma mentioned that she had a brother Allan (AE2J) now SK as are both Sid and Norma sadly, who was coming to London later in the year. He was taking a sabbatical from his teaching job in New York and would it be OK if he looked us up and then perhaps we would befriend him and his family as they knew no one in London?

I tactfully pointed out that London was very large but if he was residing in the north this could be possible as we lived in Welwyn, Herts, at that time and would be happy to make the journey, but if it was south of the river, it may well prove to be impracticable. However, in due course Al and Minna (now also passed away) arrived together with their children Nancy and Jed. They had rented a flat in Archway Road, so fairly regular meetings were quite feasible. He did bring a rig with him, but I didn’t take much notice and am not aware that he actually ever used it whilst here. However, ‘the die was now cast’! He soon started nagging “Mike you must get a ticket. I know you can do it and then we can have regular contacts together, ‘over the pond’”. But I was really too busy work-wise at the time and not particularly so inclined.

Two year later Eve (XYL) and I visited New York. Of course we were royally entertained by both Sid and Norma, and Allan and Minna. On visiting Al and Minna’s house at Brighton Beach near Brooklyn, Al showed me his current rig. It was a two piece radio I do remember – a Drake. On tuning up he was eventually, by strange coincidence, able to make contact with someone in Welwyn Garden City and funnily enough I remember that it was on 15 metres, although this was meaningless to me just then. Once we returned home we were in regular correspondence by mail and of course, the nagging started anew. So by early 1982 I finally succumbed and paid a visit one afternoon on my day off, to the RSGB, then in Doughty Street in the city. There I was duly advised “That if I could learn the contents of these two books (written if I remember correctly, by GL Benbow) then I would pass the theory exam – no problem!”

At that time in my life I was fortunate in having a very good, more or less photographic, memory (long gone, sadly). So by reading and more or less memorising a few pages every day, I soon felt I was in a position to take the written exam which was to be held at the Hatfield Poly that June.

So it only goes to show that as the saying goes ‘Where Ignorance is Bliss, it is Folly to be Wise’, for I knew/understood very little, but duly passed the exam. But however, I wasn’t prepared to settle for a G8 as I think it then was as I had by now learned that this only gave me a VHF licence which would not get me across the Atlantic.

On a visit to a radio exhibition at Leicester I stopped at the Datong stand and met Dr. Tong who demonstrated his Morse tutor, one of which I duly purchased. I also acquired a cheap straight key that I could plug into the back for practice. With the aid of these two items I was able within less than three months, to send and receive at more or less fifteen words per minute. I am fortunate in being a bit musical with a fairly good ear and I feel that this enabled me to make fairly rapid progress with the CW. I was also very lucky that when I took the exam, somewhere near Kings Cross, all the other examinees where really awful, whereas I was just ‘rather bad’, so I passed and they didn’t (Well they’ve got to pass somebody! Haven’t they?). So there I was in November of 1982 with a ‘G4’ licence and still knowing more or less nothing!

When it came to buying a rig I had no idea where to start, plus the names meant nothing to me. However I noted that Trio were made by Kenwood and as I had heard of them and seen all their stuff in John Lewis, I thought that this would be a safe bet (yes I know – don’t say it!!) I was very fortunate in having a lot of help in the early days from a then new friend, John Pierce G3IGP (now SK) and I was soon on the air. My original antenna was a HyGain 18AVT vertical five bander, 10, 15, 20, 40 and 80m, which required no ground plain radials or guy ropes. Eventually the great day came when I made a first QSO with Al AE2J on 20 meters. He was absolutely ecstatic to have finally won his long time campaign.

I soon decided to be more adventurous and so constructed a tribander in my loft for 10,15 and 20m, commonly connected to a Titterington toroidal balun (home brewed) and fed it down to the shack via a length of 75 Ohm TV cable. With this - remember, for those who were around in those ancient times, that in the early 1980s of blessed memory, propagation was incredible - I accordingly duly DXed ‘round the world’ (I probably could have done it with the proverbial bit of wet string in those years) and I have therefore, hundreds of QSL cards to prove it.

We moved from Welwyn to Bushey Heath in 1997 and I dropped out of ham radio until 2006 when I met up with Steve MØSSH who very kindly helped me to get re-started and at the same time also introduced me to the lovely guys at the Edgware and District Radio Society. I still have the HyGain, but with the original whip and coil (unrepairable) replaced with a Hustler equivalent. Nevertheless, in due course I erected a 120 foot inverted ‘V’ comudipole with a home brew 4:1 balun. I have concluded that the HyGain is a bit of a ‘Jack of all Trades but Master of None’. I have found that the doublet/dipole is much better – most of the time.

After using the old Trio/Kenwood TS830S for a couple of years I joined the 21st century and traded up to an Icom 756 Pro III. A bit of a ‘brain injury’ this by suddenly jumping about 30 years in technological progress, but it served me very well until recently, when I changed it for an Icom IC-7300, a further technological leap and a genuine pleasure to use. For 2m/70cms I have a Yaesu FTM300D connected to a Diamond X30.

It now looks like the bands are improving. I hope so, for at my age I probably haven’t got all that much time to waste.

(Note: for those who may be interested in the IC-7300, please see my take on it in the March’22 edition of RadCom)

Mar’22