My interest in radio started in 1963 when I was 5 years old. My father, an Electrical Engineer and TV and radio repair technician, gave me a broken AM broadcast radio receiver and some tools so I could be 'just like him'. I selected the hammer as it was the only tool that seemed to have any effect on the radio's fine construction. My father used to get a little angry when mowing the lawn and the spinning blades found an RF choke or transformer hidden in the grass.

By the time I was 10 years old, I had subscribed to the premier electronics magazine in Australia at the time and had my first electronic multi-project circuit construction set. It wasn't long before I was annoying everyone in the family with loud audio beeps and tones as well as radio and TV frequency intereference.

CB - Tx: 100mW / Rx: Super-regen

I was fascinated by radio propogation. It was and still is a mystery to most people. Of course there were no mobile phones with 'Apps' at the time. I remember purchasing my first CB transceiver. It cost me months of (pocket money) savings and only had a very inferior super-regenerative receiver. However, I will never forget the excitement I felt making contact with someone several miles away... I was hooked.

Single Tube Transceiver

I was already an avid SW Listener since childhood and now became very active in CB. In the 70's I occassionaly had successful DX hookups with the U.S. west coast. I also looked into becoming an Amateur Radio operator but could not master CW. At this time I had success constructing some Valve 'superhet' and 'super-regen' shortwave receivers and transmitters and also messed around with some ex-army MF/HF transceivers, which taught me a great deal about radio.

In the late 70's I designed and constructed my own digital eletronic music keyboard. At about this time, I also discovered computers and software. I set about making an S-100 bus, Z-80 computer and had it speaking english using a combination of home grown text-to-speech software and a phoneme speech chip, all before the IBM PC was released.

Over the next few decades I constructed so many electonic kits; everything from metal detectors, FM bugs, radio receivers, power supplies, audio amplifiers, signal generators, a musical keyboard, alarms, etc.
I even won a first place at the Royal Melbourne Show in 1982 for best farm irrigation invention. The device was made up of CMOS chips and of course, a 27MHz transmitter!

I finally gained my Amateur Operators Certificate (Foundation) in March 2021 thanks to the EMDRC https://www.emdrc.com.au/ after sitting the exam along with my son Paul. We both achieved a result of 100% in both theory and practical assessments and decided to maintain the momentum and, thinking it a good thing to do during Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, embarked on studying for our Advanced level certificates. In October 2021, we both passed our Advanced level AOCP exams. My exam pass result was due to a large extent to the excellent tuition and support provided again by the EMDRC.

Where my main hobby has always been radio and electronics, my professional career has always been (and still is) software development. These days, the two are so interelated that it seems like the perfect combination.

My radio gear is quite modest when compared to some of the station setups I have seen via photos on the web. However, I have the luxury of being able to access more than 40 repeaters (10m, 6m, 2m and 70cm) using only low power from my home by the beach in Chelsea which is about 30km SSE of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.




I have an assortment of modern antenna analyzers / tuners, SWR / power meters, frequency counters, SDRs, an SM1000 for Digital voice over HF, etc.

Some of my radios consist of the following:

Yaesu FT-891 for base / portable usually on 40m to 6m
Yaesu FT-818 ND for QRP base / portable operation mostly on 40m to 10m and 2m SSB
I use an MX-P50M HF power amplifier with the FT-818 just to get a few more Watts out.

uSDR uSDX QRP Transceiver / All mode operation on 80m to 10m. This little radio travels with me to Germany.
Yaesu FT-8900R for base / mobile FM operation on 10m / 6m / 2m / 70cm
TYT TH-9800 for base FM operation on 10m / 6m / 2m / 70cm
Leixen VV-898 25W mobile for FM operation on 2m / 70cm
Yaesu FT-897D for base operation mostly SSB
ICOM IC-746 for base operation mostly SSB
Motorola GP339 and GP68 2m FM
Retevis RT3S portable DMR and FM on 2m / 70cm
ALINCO DJ-G7T portable 2m / 70cm / 23cm
QYT KT-8R portable FM on 2m / 70cm

I have many other 'cheap' radios branded as Baofeng, Abbree, Jianpai, Quansheng, Puxing, WLN, HamGeek and have managed to program them all using software running on Win-10. If you need help with programming software, just send me an email.

I'm also quite active on EchoLink and also plan to put together an AllStar node soon.

I have two RG-213 coax antenna feeds to the roof of my two story dwelling. One is for semi-permanent antennas and one is for experimenting with new designs. On the semi-permanent feed there is a diplexer which splits to a Diamond SG7900A dual band 2m / 70cm and a 6m 'Flowerpot'. The diplexor will soon become a triplexor to further share the feed with a 23cm colinear antenna. The experimental feed currently connects to a multi-band Inverted-V for 6m, 10m / 12m / 15m / 17m / 20m / 30m and 40m.

73, Graeme VK3XGA (aka VK3QH)





Free Software
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Here are a few Windows software applications I've been working on.

ContactM8-AR Logbook	Two Tone Oscillator	DMR+ Alert and Monitor program
Download ContactM8-AR program	Download Two Tone Oscillator program	Download DMRAlerts program

Regarding the ContactM8-AR program: I know there are many Amateur Radio logbook software applications out there but, as a software developer, I just had to write one more. This one was designed to satisfy my basic contact logging requirements but anyone is free to download and use it as they wish.
Constructive feedback and problem reports are welcome and I will always (try to) respond. Also, please revisit regularly to check for later versions as these are works in progress.

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