New Year’s Morning, 2019

G3TXQ was well known and respected throughout the technical world of Amateur Radio, through his website and countless postings to a wide range of groups and mailing lists. Always meticulous and deep-thinking, Steve was a fount of good information – and also a very nice guy.

Steve passed away peacefully on 30th December 2018 after a long battle with cancer, which he also recorded in that same meticulous manner.

G3TXQ is known particularly for his optimized versions of the Cobweb and Hexbeam antennas, and for his work on common-mode chokes. His website karinya.net is already archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20180428131952/http://karinya.net/
and if you haven’t already visited, I strongly recommend it. Take the tour, and you will meet the man he was.

Common Mode RF Chokes

In addition to the material on his website about common-mode chokes, in 2015 Steve wrote a stand-alone article for RSGB’s online technical magazine RadCom Plus.  That article is in danger of falling into obscurity, taking with it some new information that has not been published anywhere else, so I am archiving it here in memory of Steve:

Common Mode Chokes: G3TXQ 2015

The article included a new version of Steve’s famous graphic to help in selecting broadband ferrite chokes to cover various HF amateur bands. The best chokes are the ones that cover the required band(s) with both the dark green shading and the black underline. Orange and red shading are to be avoided – the choke may do some good, but may also have problems. (For clarity, I have added a large ‘X‘ across the three chokes at the bottom. As Steve explains, those were included as particularly BAD examples, NOT to be copied.)

Writing this is not the way I had hoped to begin a New Year.
RIP, Steve.