New Ham Radio - Icom 746PRO purchased on 3/11/08
Just installed my new "Shack" on 3/12/08! Listened to Ham's after my first meeting on 3/12 at the Fox Radio Radio League. Installed the antenna's on Saturday 3/29/08 in the attic (not the Buckmaster) but the cables are running where they can be seen so need to figure out how to get them into the attic via the pantry and 3rd bedroom closet!
Ham Shack consists of:Home Brew Computer - Intel Dual Quad Core Xeon, 12gigs memory, 8800GTS, Vista-64KC9NRN - Ham Shack
Comet GP-3 mounted in the attic for now, very solid signals TX and RX work great!
Radiowavz 20 Meter Dipole mounted in the attic until I get my General. I use it with my built in antenna tuner on 10m with some successes to Alabama and Louisiana with about an SWR of 1:5.
Tha name says it all! The Buckmaster OCF Dipole is built like a tank, it goes up as soon as my LMR400 feedline shows up
Picture of the shack prior to selling the SB-220. The Astron RS-35M and 746 now have cooling fans behind them blowing quietly and keeping the them very cool. The basements stays around 62f.
(7/20/08) Behind the shack, finally got it hooked up to the amp and performed a tune up and one test to confirm operation at low power. I'll be installing the 3kw OCF Dipole next weekend and will post the results of full power testing then. I also have to complete the grounding of the entire station then as well!
Palstar PM2000A SWR / Wattmeter to be used on main equipment until the 3000 Pro is available again.
Radiocraft has their 3000 Pro available at the end of summer 2008 I'll have that one in the shack by September I hope.
Click the picture to visit their web page.
Night time listening, the SB-301 is now hooked up to the 20m dipole in the attic for RX and is doing a great job!
I need to take a picture of everything on including the Nixie Clock a friend got for me, I change the shack so often I can't keep up!
Updated picture of the shack (06/08/09)Icom 746Pro, it's also hooked up to my computer for remote control (HRD and Echolink)
Home brewed computer Intel Dual Quad Core 2.8ghz Xeon CPU's, 12gigs memory, Nvidia 8800GTS, CalDigit RAID0 Array - Western Digital VelociRaptors 300gig 10k rpm hard drives, Sound Blaster XF-i sound card and dual Plextor DVD Burners plus dual Dell 24" LCD Monitors.
Here are the parts I purchased to mount the OCF Dipole to the top of the mast. I know it's bulky but it mates directly to both.
As nutty as it looks, when I paint the balun and the pvc adaptor it should look ok, at least its safe from weather and is solid to the mast. The feedline will just run straight down inside the fiberglass poles. But where to put it, the trees aren't gonig to work, wife says the side of the house but the looks won't be very good, not sure what to do...
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This page was last updated: June 8, 2009
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