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Last updated 1-5-07
Hello and welcome to KM5TZ's website!
Here you will find some details of my vintage restoration and homebrew ham radio projects ...
About me...
I was born and educated in the UK... I used to be G4CYH and after a long absence from the hobby (about 25 yrs) I became KM5TZ. I lived in Dallas, TX at the time (hence the 5 call) but I now live near San Diego in California. I am an Electrical Engineer by profession and have spent most of my career developing microwave telecommunications products.
I enjoy both building my own equipment and restoring vintage gear. Most recently I have been repairing and restoring some HP test equipment.
The newest piece of commercial Ham gear I own is a Drake TR7 and the only other solid state piece is a National HRO-500 receiver - most everything else uses good old fashioned valves, or tubes as I now call them. Lately I have built an SDR Radio - the very latest in Ham technology. Check out the links below for some pics of my projects:
Me in the shack (a few yrs ago).
This used to be my favorite AM receiver (it sounds pretty good on sideband too). This is a Racal RA-17L that I lugged back from the UK. I completely rebuilt this one and changed out the audio output section (stock output is only 50mW) for a 6AQ5. It has exceptional AM performance, one of the best I have ever heard. I had planned to add a synchronous AM detector to it for the very best in AM performance but my SDR radio has a synchronous AM detector already and has now become my favorite receiver.
The speaker above this receiver - It is an early RME speaker. The guy I bought it from said it sounded better than a Collins speaker and he was right - it really is a great sounding speaker for AM.
Most recently I have updated my lab equipment; much of the equipment you see below was purchased as non-working, restored and repaired by myself. I'm now well equipped for work up to about 26GHz. You can see my SDR PA on the bench (recent project). Most of my test equipment is HP. HP produces excellent service manuals and many of them can be downloaded free of charge from www.agilent.com . Repairing higher end equipment such as spectrum analyzers is often not as difficult as it may seem - so long as you have a service manual. I have spectrum analyzers, signal generators, power supplies, counters, a network analyzer and more - all the necessary tools of the trade for an RF engineer!
I maintain 2 very similar test benches; one in my ham shack and the other in my office.
The links below will take you to some of my past and present projects:
Collins 312A-2 (S/N 1 !!)
Class E AM transmitter A big one! (Completed)
Collins 32V2 (Completed)
Homebrew AM Transmitter (4-125's modulated by 4-125's) (on hold for the time being)
Collins 75A2 (Completed)
Collins KWS-1 (Completed)
Eldico SSB-100 (Completed)
misc restoration tips (ongoing, last updated 6-30-03)
SX-28 (Completed but not fully documented)
SDR (Software defined Radio) (underway)
Tabletop Class E AM transmitter (80/160m) (underway)
Thank you for visiting!
Feel free to contact me at: KM5TZ@san.rr.com