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Personal Interests
A little bit about me.
Well I am in my 50's and married to Brigid and We have 5 children. 3 Girls, 2 Boys and 3 beautiful granddaughters
I'm into radio since I was knee high to a grasshopper.
the first introduction to radio was when I was about 7 years old. I remember my father getting a new valve radio which ran on a wet and dry battery and he had to take one of them back to the shop to get it re charged. Well I was really fascinated when I heard all the sounds coming from it !! Then one Sunday morning while my mother and father were gone to Church AND of coarse my brother who is 7 years older than me was supposed to be looking after me but he was more interested in a young lady which lived up the road from us, So when I got the chance I duly got a knife and opened the back of the radio to see if I could find the little people that were doing all the talking in there. I even took out the valves to see if there was anyone in there Hi Hi.. Well anyway I got the radio back toghether and all was fine till my father turned it on and of course there was a fizzzzle and silence. Well at that I went into hiding and my father was furious because the radio was only 1 month old. So next day he brought it back to the shop and was asked to call back for it a few days later.. OOooohhh boy !! when he came home from work that evening with a new radio !! you guessed it !! the big question was who did it !! Well anyway in the finish I had to admit to it. Well I got the biggest hiding I ever got that evening !! BUT that didn't put me off !! I'm still playing with radio and still find it as fascinating as ever..
Ok I better finish before I bore you all..
Please let me know what you think of my page and let me know if there is any more interesting stuff out there that I could add to my page.
For now from Jim and thank you for taking the time to brows my page.
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Current Projects
- FSTV (Fast Scan TV)
- This is a picture of me with some antennas I built. the one on the right is what we build our 23cm beam's from. The one I'm holding up is a 16el which I made from the one on the right which is a 8el yagi for uhf tv and the big one on the left is a 36el which I made from 2 of the one on the right.
- Well I have been playing around with FSTV with about 5 years now but never got it off the ground properly till this year.
- My 1st experence with it was with a 10w 70cm tx and got a distance of 25miles apptox as the crow flies to Ian EI6GY's shack, but he is up high over Waterford city and I need to get into the city which is somewhere between 40 and 50km from my QTH as that's the closest Ham radio population to me and I also suffer with big hills almost all the way around me. Ok thats enough about my location.
- I recently got a 1w 23cm tx and have done some tests with that and to my amazment I'm getting some brilliant distances with just 1 watt. So far Ive got approx 15 to 20km as the crow flies with it !! BUT !! that was more or less on level ground and I need to get out over a 100mtr hill which is about 7km away.
- So that means that I will have to use a repeater to get the distance I need. I am trying some sites at the moment but I need a little more power before I can go any further.
- Ok That's about it for now. I will keep adding to this page as I keep making progress.
- 24/7/00
- Right I'm back again with some good news and some bad.
- 1st of all the 2nd picture above is from a test we did on around 20 of June from a sight called Portlaw which is overlooking Waterford City and as u can see the results were 100% eventhough the picture dont show it that way as that evening the WX was blowing a gale on the hill and was next to impossiable to hold the antenna in any straight line.
- Now since that test I've built a kit 10w linear (and heres the bad news!! the Mitsubishi main block was selling for £45 sterling up to last week and now weve been told that it's out of stock and wont be available again till October 2000 and the price is to take a jump to over £100. SORE HeHeHe)
- Now with my cheap £45 block !! and a 36el homebrew yagi I've done some tests from Portlaw back to Dungarvan (My QTH) approx 35km with some very good results (BUT still need some more work) results about a P3 to P4 and I need to have 2 antennas on RX and 2 on TX so by splitting the antennas Im gonna loose some of the signal again.
- Well anyway heres some pictures of that test and hopefully it will be all good news next time. Bye for now again 73 Jim.
- This is me Live from Dungarvan to Portlaw.
- Some of the boys interested in ATV. From left is John EI8JA, David EI7FYB and Mick EI3IQ.
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Irish Radio Transmitters Society
Contact Information
Electronic mail address
ei8igjim@cablesurf.com
Web address
https://members.tripod.com/~Jim_FarrellBack to Top
Copyright Jim Farrell.
Last revised: May 2003.
