I0JX home page

Technical	English: GO 6 AND 10 METERS MOBILE WITH YOUR MAGNETIC 2-METER WHIP MODIFY COLLINS S-LINE FOR CW TRANSCEIVE OPERATION IMPROVE CW SEMI BREAK-IN WITH ANY TRANSCEIVER 50-OHM SINGLE-BAND BALUNS INPUT CHOKE & RESONANT CHOKE POWER SUPPLIES TIPS ON USING THE ANC-4 ON 50 MHz RUSSIAN 50 MHz / 1.8 MHz LINEAR AMPLIFIER WHY DO SHORT ANTENNAS NOT PERFORM WELL? SELECTING CAPACITORS IN RF POWER APPLICATIONS AT HF A BIG HOME MADE LINEAR A "MINUTE MAID" STEALTH ANTENNA FOR APARTMENT DWELLERS INTERCONNECTING THE DFD2-S DIGITAL DISPLAY TO MY COLLINS 75S-3B RECEIVER FEED YOUR RADIOS USING INEXPENSIVE PC POWER SUPPLIES USE 24 V RELAYS AT 12 V ADAPT A 6-METER TRANSVERTER KIT TO THE 4-METER (70-MHZ) BAND A RATHER UNUSUAL LINEAR AMPLIFIER FOR THE 4-METER (70-MHZ) BAND A VHF & UHF YAGI SYSTEM WITH HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL POLARIZATIONS AN ANTENNA SYSTEM WITH FOUR POLARIZATIONS; LINEAR AND CIRCULAR Italiano: OPERARE IN 4 METRI (70 MHZ) IN MANIERA FACILE E A BASSO COSTO ONDE STAZIONARIE: MITI E REALTA'
Operational	SIX-METER AND FOUR-METER BEACONS ITALIAN CALLSIGN SYSTEM OLD ITALIAN CALLS MY STATION MY SIX-METER DX LOG
Reviews	GELOSO STORY RBZ: U.S. NAVY PORTABLE RECEIVER BIRD WATTMETERS & SWITCHES
Software	UPDATING CLUSTERMASTER DXCC FILES

The call I0JX, having a 2-letter suffix, belongs to the first series of callsigns issued in Italy; this occurred after WWII when amateur radio became legal. In the sixties, when I got my license, it was still possible to choose a call, and I then took the call of a ham who had got it in the late forties, but had then resigned after a short while. Eventually, they decided not to reassign the old calls when becoming available. I have counted that 305 short calls ("1-by-2" or "2-by-2") are currently registered in Italy (out of the theoretical maximum of 676), and I have estimated that less than one third of them still have some interest for ham radio. By the way, if you are interested in the Italian callsign system, look at my page providing a quite comprehensive overview on this topic.

I also have extra-class license in the U.S., where I was able to obtain the matching call K0JX thanks to the vanity call program.

Many people say that amateur radio is going to gradually disappear, but, despite that, I must confess still feeling myself very committed to radio in general. My radio career started in 1964, at 17, with an home-built 10W VHF AM transmitter (one QQE03/12 - 6360 modulated by a push-pull pair of EL84s - 6BQ5s) and a Geloso G. 4/214 receiver hooked up to a nuvistor converter.

I occasionally still wonder whether devoting so many personal resources to ham radio makes real sense, but then I take comfort in the words of an old and good friend who often reminds me that: quitting amateur radio after so many years would mean having wasted a substantial part of lifetime for nothing. In fact, why quit? I believe that the amateur radio community is and will remain quite an unbeatable example of human fraternization. Can one expect that the ever growing crowd of Internet hobbyists will succeed in recreating, on a worldwide basis, the strong inter-personal feeling which radio amateurs were able to achieve? Probably not, as they often only have a common tool, not a common interest like hams instead have!

Having started as a boy in the vacuum tube era, a huge tube pinout database is still today imprinted in my mind. Even though I cannot remove that old stuff from my head, some room still remains for playing with PCs. I started in the Apple II era (1983) with some logging and antenna tracking software and today, in the "IBM-compatible" era, I am concentrating on Microsoft Visual Basic programming, easy to manage without being a computer nerd.

I was, and to some extent still am, an avid DXCC hunter, having all DXCC countries confirmed. I have also participated in many contests, twice achieving world top-scorer in the ARRL CW contest on 40 meters. Most of my operating is CW, the only mode which, in my opinion, still makes sense for radio practitioners today, all other modes appearing obsolescent to me when compared to modern communications technologies (this is a long debate, not for this page). So, despite having a fairly modern station, I still keep a Drake C-line and a full Collins S-line too. I also have an old-fashioned setup for the SKN (Straight Key Night), to enjoy the feeling of the good-old-days, consisting of an immaculate pre-war HRO receiver complete with 13 "drawers" and hooked-up to an EICO crystal-controlled novice-style CW transmitter. Beautifully operational. Finally, I have some Geloso equipment which I mainly use on AM, and other boatanchors.

By the way, if you also own a Collins S-line, you may be interested in a modification I developed for operating transceive on CW, with no need for adding an hard-to-find 454.8 Kc/s BFO crystal.

Still on the issue of making life easier when operating CW, I made a gadget for improving semi break-in operations in conjunction with any rig. I find it very useful, it is also very easy to reproduce!

Bird Electronic Corporation RF test equipment are among the items I like most and which I am always in search of (if at reasonable prices...). If you are interested in Bird items, especially high-power wattmeters, you may give a look to my Bird page.

Despite time shortage, I still occasionally succeed to build or at least put my hands into radio equipment. My latest realization of a certain complexity was the adaptation of a surplus VHF russian linear amplifier which I bought at the Friedrichshafen hamfest for a few hundred DMs and which works very fine on 50 MHz. I recently modified it to also operate on 1.8 MHz, thus complementing my Henry 4k-Ultra amplifier which has neither 6 nor 160 meters. I have seen this type of amplifier on sale almost every year, so I am available to freely send the schematic diagram of my circuits to anyone wanting to replicate them. It takes the high-voltage supply from my Henry 4k-Ultra which utilizes a resonant choke filter, offering very good voltage stabilization. You will read I had some problems with the screen bypass capacitors; by the way I have a page just on selecting capacitors for HF high-power transmitters if you are interested.

Before that I was involved in much more challenging projects, like the big linear using an EIMAC 4CX10000D / 8171 which I built in 1981.

The "magic band" (6 meters) is the one I operate most these days. Lot of listening and just a few QSOs (apart from the sporadic-E season), but a lot of emotion too. In a few years from now we will again be at the sunspot cycle peak, and 50-MHz QSOs with the Pacific area will again become possible, as they were fairly common in years 2000 - 2002 (see my 50-MHz DX log). I operate six-meter (50.004 MHz) and four-meter (70.088 MHz) beacons which are located at my business QTH.

The 6-meter band is often plagued by nearby man-made interference (lamps, leaky powerline insulators, sparking devices, computers, TV sets, etc.). If you have such problems, you may be interested in my experience with the ANC-4, a device specifically intended to suppress local interference.

I recently began working 6 meters from my car too, using a 2-meter magnetic mount antenna. Actually that antenna works well both on 6 and 10 meters, click here to see. I also have a page explaining the perfomance constraints of short antennas should you be interested in it.

I also like playing with surplus equipment. If you are interested in the RBZ military receiver you may read my report on that.

Do you need something else than RF chokes or ferrite baluns? Then consider my balun design for single-band antennas.

I am an electronic engineer managing telecommunications projects at a company dealing with satellite payloads & digital hardware design and prototyping. Married, with one girl (30) and one boy (27).

Those still using ClusterMaster, a packet- and web-cluster program I wrote several years ago, may update it with the most recent ITU prefix and DXCC country files. St. Barthelemy now included.

Ciao to all you guys and gals and thanks for this short cybermeeting with me...... Tony, I0JX