Category: The Shacks

Well here we are at the beginning of August 2019 and due to unforseen personal circumstances I have had to change my location once more.

It was quite a sad day when I had to remove the equipment from my purpose built shack and take down the antennae, oh well, these things are sent to try us.

Like any ongoing project, the shack has seen a few transformations and equipment moves.
The test gear has now been moved to the other end of the shack and a second oscilloscope and also a signal generator added.

Before moving to my current QTH, the shack looked like this. All three monitors were mounted on the rear wall to give a cleaner appearance of the top shelf being only used for the PC speakers, one of the Baofeng UV-5 handhelds and a few odds and ends.

My QTH between 2016 and mid 2019 had a nice large garden so I took advantage of this and purchased a nice, good quality wooden shed which was being solely used as my operating shack.

The shack was fully chipboard lined and any gaps filled as an aid to help soundproof and insulate it. The chipboard also gives a nice clean feel to the interior.

Yet again moving, and into smaller premises, meant the shack size was seriously reduced.

In fact it was reduced to two radios, both being the Yaesu FT-857D, often described as a “shack in a box”.

At this point in time, I had access to a reasonable sized shack and garden, both of which I intended to use to maximum effect.

I used a Yaesu FT-847 and this stood where I later replaced it with a Yaesu FT-980. For mobile use I had an Icom 2725e which has true dual band capability, allowing reception on 2m and 70cms at the same time.

My first shack consisted of a Kenwood TS-430s, a Kenwood MC-60A microphone, a simple antenna tuner, a SWR/power meter, paper logbook, and later adding a computer.

The equipment was in a spare bedroom on a table with no frills, just the very basics needed to operate.