I (Colin, G8TMV) currently live just south of Cambridge
in the village of
Sawston.
My main hobby is Amateur (Ham) Radio and most of this site is about my radio related
activities and the things I've built or collected.
I'm a member of the Radio Society of Great
Britain, (RSGB) and also did volunteer work for them as
a QSL bureau sub-manager for the G1 and G2 callsign series.
The most recent project is the G8TMV Keyer project, The CW keyer is designed to fit into a traditional Altoids tin. The basic design started as a clone of the old K1EL shareware K8 keyer. I've made several enhancements to the hardware and software to improve usability and functionality.
A more recent project is the Quartzmite, an all SMT development of Dave Benson, K1SWL's original "Rockmite" QRPp CW transceiver with several modifications to improve it's performance and usability.
A page showing information about my Steve Weber, KD1JV designed ATS3B (a low power CW transceiver) which I built from a kit and the hardware and software modifications I've made to it is here.
Some information about my CTCSS tone encoder design is here. I designed and built this because I wanted to add CTCSS tone encoding to my Kenwood TS-790E so it could be used on my local repeaters. Since I had several spare boards I offered them to other Hams who wanted to do a similar modification and I've now sold in excess of 500.
I have spent some of my amateur radio time helping new people study for their licence exams, at one time as part of the training the candidates had to do various practical exercises. For the Intermediate exam a practical was required including a construction project and together with my local Radio Club I produced a suitable kit. Information about the Intermediate VFO project is here. Unfortunately some of the parts were getting expensive or difficult to obtain so I had to retire the VFO kit.
One project was a system for remotely controlling antennas. Some information on the early development is here.
At a G-QRP convention buildathon several years ago the project was a Solar powered QRPp transmitter designed by Jonny Apell, SM7UCZ. I took part and later investigated some of the problems with its PA see here for more information.
Many years ago my eldest daughter had a homework assignment to draw her family tree. So we talked about it and phoned Grandma to get more information. I got interested and for many years spent time doing research myself. To see the information on my family history research see the Tuckley Family Tree.