Equipment

Well, I got tired of not having dials and knobs to use on my radio. I liked the networking aspect of the Flex6400, but the novelty wore off. I made the switch back to a regular radio and I love it! Two views of my "shack" area upstairs.

I finally made my own dipole antenna. It's a fan dipole that I'm gonna hang in our trees. Started out as a test with a cutting board. I was successful, so onward to bigger and brighter design!

Yaesu FTDX3000.  (Sold for my FlexRadio 6400.)                                                                       

Yaesu FTM-400DR and FTM-100D. At old house.

  Yaesu FT-1500M used for digipeater with FTM-400 and FTM-100 mounted under desk.  At old house.                          

Igate running Ubuntu using APRX on Raspberry Pi. At old house.

  Hustler 6BTV vertical antenna. 24 radials.                                    

1/4 wave ground plane for APRS, Comet GP-3, discone and LaCrosse weather station.

 My "Command Center".  Current as of 10/13/17. Just got finished renovating it.

My FT-3200. I have decided to use this as my RV radio. (Sold it).

FTM-100D has been moved to shack for Wires-X node radio.                        My FT1D is my nightstand radio now.

Some pics of my tower install. Only used for VHF/UHF antennas and my weather station. My antennas at least doubled in height.  There are three antennas on it. My GP-3, a 1/4 wave ground plane and a discone. Last pic is all the cable I had to sort out after running it into the shack.

Kinda got carried on a couple of welds. Had to kick it down to low power for the mounting poles. I think they'll be ok though. I reinforced one end and made sure I painted the crap out of them to prevent rust.

Raising it was a pain in the ass. I couldn't do anything because of my back, so I had to enlist the help of two trucks and my wife, son and two neighbor boys. Funny thing is that I planned the mounting so that it could be removed for repair/additions (that's why it is set in conduit that are capped at the bottom). That plan is a bust. There's no way we can safely lift that and lay it down. Looks like my son will have to shimmy up there or I rent a lift.

Some pics of my 1/4 wave ground plane antenna. I did this one a little different. I used the standard bulkhead connector, but used a crimp connector and soldered it to the vertical and center post of connector. I also used crimp ring terminals for the radial connections. I had to melt off the plastic from all the crimp connectors. They were all soldered in the connectors. The ring connectors weren't as rigid for the radials as I liked, so I put some JB weld on the connections to firm them up. Mounted it at the top of some PVC conduit and siliconed the exposed area and around the base to hold it in place. SWR is 1.2 on most 2m freq. and max of 1.4 on 70cm.