The Willow transceiver has become very well known, especially in West Yorkshire.

The transceiver began life as a club project in Pontefract and has been taken up by many other amateurs, including a sizable group at the North Wakefield club under the guidance of Dave, G4IAU.

The design and prototyping work on Willow was all down to Colin, G0NQE and John, G4LOS. Here's what Colin has to say about the project:

Then in September 2003 came the idea for a club project. "What are we going to build?" was the cry from John G4LOS, "What about a transceiver?" was the reply from me Colin G0NQE and so that evening the concept of a transceiver as a project was born.

After some lengthy discussions on the landline between John and me, we decided to build a single conversion transceiver with 10Mhz IF. The transceiver was to be built in a modular form thereby making construction easier for those not used to building a fairly complex project. The main criteria were to make the radio easily reproducible and without complex setting up procedures, also the ability for each board to be tested after completion.

We decided to use the dead bug style for the circuit boards which lends itself very well to RF construction.

Then after more discussions with John it was decided that we would build the transceiver as a separate Receiver and Transmitter with a common VFO and separate carrier oscillators.

John got the job of designing and building the receiver and CIO, I got the job of designing and building the transmitter and VFO.

Prototype boards were constructed by us and then copied by the seven club members who volunteered to build the project.