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Shack as at February 2024 - forever evolving
All Audio in the shack runs through this mixer, which gives almost limitless possibilities to route audio where I want it. So this handle audio to and from the two rigs and the two PCs and the microphone as well as piping audio to the shack speakers.
The microphone is a BM 800 which you can pick up for about £15 and works a treat!
The VHF tower has the rotator on it where I can easily swap aerials between the 6, 4, 2m and 70cm bands. I usually only mount one antenna at a time and tend to use them for some of the RSGB contests.
The speaker at present is not in use - just filling space!!
The Yaesu FT-991A is mainly used on the VHF/UHF bands. It can be switched into the HF fan dipole if needed.
As the rig is set into the shelf, the speaker to the right was added. Mic padding is provided by the pot just to the right and above the speaker, as the output from the mixer would otherwise be too high for the mic input.
The three switches to the right direct where the Morse keys and the foot-switch are directed. The 1/4' plugs to the right are where the Morse keys are plugged in.
The main rig is the Yaesu FTdx101MP.
Above that is the MFJ-962D Roller Inductor Tuner. At the present time it is just active on the 160m dipole which comes in on antenna 2 socket of the 5000. Antenna socket 1 has the 40/80m fan dipole on it which will also cover all other bands using the built in tuner in the radio.
Ant' socket 3 is used for testing antennas, and Ant' 4 is connected through to the 6m antenna when it is in use.
The straight key and the paddles are both Kent keys, the but at the far right is of unknown origin and very rarely gets any use!
Morse code is my favourite mode and the straight key is my choice of weapon! That key has seen many hours of action!
The antenna switching needs re-organising, but at present the left most and the right most switches work on the V/UHF side of things.
The left one chooses between the V-2000 and what ever antenna I have up on the VHF tower. The choice goes to the far right switch which either sends it to the FT-991A or (for 6m) to the FTdx5000.
The centre switch sends the fan dipole to either the FT-dx5000 or the FT-991A.
Mains filtering is done in the white plastic box to the far right of the picture.
Under the bench is the PC that runs windows for contesting (it's too slow for much else!)
Also the home made foot-switch which uses a couple of cloths pegs for the sprung pedal and a microswitch.
To the right under the draws is the power supply to run the 12v side of things.
There is also a laptop that runs Linux (Xubuntu) which I use for most things where possible (it's much faster than the Windows machine!) Also used during the Monday sked to take signals from an SDR when all members of the net are not receivable from the radio in the shack.
The Phase QRM Eliminator has proven it works on 6m, but as yet I've not had any good results on HF. That is the next project, to try to set up a QRM RX antenna. QRM levels here are not too bad, but they still at times can be a problem.
Other thoughts are to make a tuned RX loop antenna that should give a better signal to noise ratio and help eliminate the QRM.
Below the QRM eliminator is a dummy load, which is presently plugged into the MFJ tuner (which is used on 160m)
When we moved to the new QTH a work bench where I could dabble with some electronics was what I really wanted. I'm very happy with the new bench, and it has proved to be very useful, but still have not attacked any real project work.
As well as the test equipment it also houses my old (1943) HRO, which I originally used with the Heathkit DX 100U. With it's full set of coil packs, it still works very well and have not yet had to use any of the full set of valves I have for it!
The main working space of the bench. Next job is to get some shelves on the wall for housing components etc.
Under the bench is my old CB radio (repaired it some months ago) and under that is an international multi-mode II, which I converted from the CB frequencies to the 10m band. I had my first CW QSO on that radio from my tractor (when I worked on a farm) back in April 1991. It was the most exciting experience to get UA6BH in the log, shortly followed by WA4NBE.
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