Welcome

Welcome to my small corner of the interweb.

I am Steve, G1YBB. I live in Hereford, England which is very close to the border with Wales so you will more often than not hear me operating as G1YBB/P or GW1YBB/P up on one of the local hills or mountains in the Brecon Beacons National Park.
This is me (some time ago now):
Told you the mast would hold me
Here you can find my Amateur Radio related pages.
I will be keeping it simple and responsive for all platforms.
On all pages clicking an image will load a larger version.

I can be emailed by using my first name as above @g1ybb.uk (or the email on my QRZ page is correct and up to date)

I have been a licenced radio ham since August 1987 when I was what we called a Class B licencee with 400W access to 50MHz and above. I was very active in VHF contesting particularly on 144MHz, always operating from a hill top portable site, or as high as we could get with a standard car in the Black Mountains. We were a limited budget outfit using ex army masting and scaffold poles and what equipment we could afford between us. ‘We’ was mostly myself and Kevin G1VDF. The contesting kind of dwindled to inactivity and for some many years I was inactive on the bands.

I rekindled my interest when another friend Paul G1YFC came back to the hobby in June 2015. In the meantime I had become (been given by UK licencing) a ‘full’ licence meaning I could now use all bands. I got myself a second hand Yaesu FT-897D shack in a box and started to explore HF. Since then I have added an FT-857D and FT-817 to my radio options. Later still I have sold the FT897D and added the Icom IC7300, IC9700 & IC7610.

Also since I was last active the internet has exploded and become a valuable tool. I have embraced all the online logbook systems and am enjoying the full featured logging programs. My standard logging program is Log4OM but it is good to see that Mike Goodey G0GJV is still out there with his Minos contest logger that I used in the early 90s.

Currently my activities are mainly VHF contesting on all bands portable and some HF contesting at home when I can squeeze it in. Also antenna construction to support both. I am enjoying the lightweight options available to use now and being able to combine radio with another love of the mountains is a great combination.

Where possible my construction pages will be fairly detailed and verbose as I have found some ‘design’ pages leave me with several questions on details. I prefer to detail more than required than miss out a detail. If something is not clear on any of my construction projects feel free to email me at the address above.

Enjoy, and thanks for visiting.