Shack Shots

Information about Members' Shacks

Jeff, N1KDO

Here is the electronics lab and ham shack of N1KDO. In this photo, the place is looking slightly less destroyed than usual.

The desk on the left is for electronics repair and construction. Under test is a 6-meter repeater receiver. The desk on the right is my "operating position".

My primary station radio is the Elecraft K3. I'm using that with the KPA500 amplifier and KAT500 autotuner, so I have 500 watts of no-tune solid-state power with pretty much instant QSY. I also have the P3 with SVGA adapter and Electrovoice RE20 mike to round out my all-American HF station.

My antennas include some attic installed antennas for VHF and UHF, a 40M dipole for 40M (duh), 15M, and (amazingly) 6M fed with RG-58, and a 80M "doublet" fed with 450 ohm "window line" that works on most of the other amateur bands. The window line is converted to a very short run of coax by a DX Engineering 1:1 balun right outside the shack.

I'm using DX Lab Suite for logging and rig control. The desks are made by Anthro, which is a Tektronix spin-off. Foot switch is Linemaster Clipper. (These are the best I have found.)

Extensive effort has been spent on grounding and lightning protection. There are five 8' ground rods, all bonded by cadwelding to #2 solid copper wire, and connected to neutral at the power meter. The antenna feeders all go through Polyphaser lightning arresters outside, the feeders enter the house through a 3" conduit, where they appear that the panel seen in the upper left of the photo. There, each coax to the rigs is fitted with a push-on PL-259 fitting (from Max-Gain Systems, these are the best I could find). When I am not operating, every piece of coax is disconnected here and the giant knife switch is opened. The power to the desk is disconnected (two cords, one for 120 and one for 240) and the entire desk is completely floating. It takes less than 30 seconds to connect or disconnect. There's a bit more detail about the grounding at http://www.n1kdo.com/lightning/index.html.

John, N4TOL

Main operating radio is an Icom IC-7600 into an OCF (off center fed) Buckmaster wire antenna up about 50 feet in a pine tree.  LDG AT-1000 ProII automatic tuner and an Ameritron ALS-600 amplifier.

For 2/440 there is my trusty (26 year old) Kenwood TM-721 dual bander.

Neil, N4FN

The station at home is a Yaesu FT-5000. For HF I utilize a GAP Challenger and a K4KIO Hex Beam antenna. Recently with the aid of my friend Dave W7FB (an antenna genius!) we installed a 40/80 meter inverted "L". At a recent Dayton pilgrimage I added a Palstar HF-Auto tuner. When a bit of extra grunt is needed I use an Alpha 99 amp. I have automated the antenna rotor control with the HyGain YRC-1. Software is Ham Radio Deluxe/DM-780 and NaP3 Pan Display along with Simon Brown's excellent Gray Line map.

 

K4YJJ
Last updated February 20, 2015