Hi, I'm Tim, G7KTP. I have been licensed since 1990 and I am located in IO82MA, on the edge of the Black Mountains on the border between England and Wales. I am QRV on most bands up to 122 GHz (although I rarely operate below VHF) and combine my love of hiking in the hills with my hilltop microwave operation.
I am a chartered engineer, and by day I'm working as Director of Technical Solutions and Product Strategy for RFMW, a specialist RF and microwave company based in California. My work takes me around the world, meeting engineers and sometimes amateurs, and much of what I write here comes from my experiences and love of RF and Microwave. I've had articles published in Practical Wireless and RadCom.
Views expressed on this site are my own and do not represent those of my employer.
The Leo Bodnar LBE-1420 and LBE-1421 GPSDOs are easy to use, but a few of their settings make a real difference to the quality of your frequency reference. Here’s what each one does
The Smith Chart turns pages of impedance data into a single picture. This guide covers the five key things every radio amateur needs to know to read one — plus worked examples of
The Motorola–Freescale–NXP RF power lineage is coming to an end. After decades of shaping amateur, broadcast and commercial RF amplifiers, NXP has issued its final discontinuation notice for the remaining LDMOS devices.
RF amplifier oscillation can turn a well-designed power amplifier into an unstable, spur-generating headache. This article shows the most common causes of instability, how to identify oscillation on the bench, and practical techniques
A revised 23cm bandplan is set to be debated at the IARU Region 1 General Conference in Vienna this month, with a small but significant footnote that moonbounce operators should note. The proposal
The FCC has opened 2.4GHz and 5.7GHz to direct-to-device satellite proposals — bands UK microwave operators also hold on a secondary basis. The interference risk today is minimal, but the regulatory precedent isn’t,
A practical walkthrough for installing the SRTM Path Profile utility, downloading the correct terrain tiles, and generating reliable path plots between two radio sites. Ideal for helping microwave enthusiasts produce accurate terrain profiles
An LNA can cut your 24GHz noise figure significantly — so why did it only buy me 2–3dB of real SNR on tropo? The answer was in the troposphere, not the receiver.
A step-by-step guide to building the G3PHO dual-mode feedhorn for 10GHz using copper plumbing fittings, with the SMA coax-fed version and a calculator to check your dish’s f/D.