This is my shack on a typical day. The rig, a venerable old TS850, takes pride of place in the middle of an old desk with the old PC’s LCD display right in front of me. I use a wireless PC keyboard and mouse to reduce the clutter (well, when it’s tidied up a bit maybe). There’s an old Amp Supply Co linear to the left with a fabulous old Yaesu peak-reading power meter sitting on top (it’s not as fancy as an LP-100a but does the job) and just under the right hand corner is a switch for a homebrewed remote antenna relay box using 6 lovely Russian vacuum relays out in the field. There’s an old Morse Machine next to the monitor on the right with a handy remote memory trigger box to the left of the rig and paddle to the right. Strangely, there’s not a single microphone in sight! Behind the old multimeter on the right is an old MFJ antenna analyser and underneath an old rotator control box, recently repaired. Between the old anglepoise lamp and the soldering iron is a homebrew AC voltmeter, and to the left of the Morse Machine remote a homebrew PC to radio interface using a commercial USB-to-serial-port converter.

As you can tell, it’s mostly old gear. I haven’t spent much on shiny new radio gear for years - in fact, I can’t remember the last radio thing I bought from new. Most of my stuff comes “pre-loved” from eBay or TradeMe . The upside is I can afford some decent kit. The downside, or rather the fun part, is maintaining it.

The boxes on the shelf behind hold G4iFB QSL cards. I’ve stopped collecting them now but am reluctant to throw all that hard work away (~280 DXCC countries confirmed from G, mostly using 100W and all on simple wire antennas). I’m rapidly growing a new collection of ZL2iFB cards now though with over 200 countries worked and over 120 confirmed after about 2 years on air from ZL, a good proportion of them on LoTW (close to 20% of my QSOs are QSLd on LoTW). I have enough confirmations on LoTW to claim mixed mode and CW DXCC but there’s lots more DX chasing left to go.

My main rig is a TS850s with auto-ATU, voice keyer (for the few SSB contests I do) and lovely 400Hz IRC CW filters. Having had it from new, the 850 is an old friend but it’s still a fair match for any other HF rig (with good crystal filters, who really needs DSP?). The quick memory is a boon. The method of filter selection is a bit of a pain (not quite so bad if you remember to press both the 8MHz and 455kHz switches together with one finger). I also have another TS850s for 2-radio contesting (maybe one day) and yet another incomplete wreck for spares. Click here for a few TS850 mods and repairs. Find out why your TS850 loves being used.

HF amp : I use an old Amp Supply Co LK550 with QSK using a Jennings vacuum relay. At full steam, its 3 x 3 -500 triodes will comfortably light the light bulb at the end of a long feeder on any HF band (not to mention the fluorescent tube in nextdoor's kitchen at a previous house!). However the license limit in ZL is 500W out and much of the time it loafs along at 300 or 400W, not least because the mains wiring here needs some attention (hence the AC voltmeter). I don’t use the QSK because it eats relays for breakfast and, as a rule, they only expire during contests when I’m doing rather well. I think I need to fish the PTT line out of the TS850 to fire a transistor to key the linear as quickly as possible, rather than use the rig’s reed relay.

VHF rig : there’s a pair of PRS walkie-talkies is somewhere around near the shack - useful to keep in touch with Deborah when I’m out in the paddock hoisting aerials. At last, I’ve found a use for microphones and ~70cms!

The kit’s all very nice but by far my most valued possession is a sense of hearing finely honed to about 400 -700Hz. I'd trade the rest of my station to keep that.

There’s more station info on homebrew, PC logging, antennas and other interests.

Keep notes!

Being a scientist by training, I like to keep a little lab notebook or journal with details of the ‘experiments’ that I conduct in connection with amateur radio. The notebook has proven invaluable over the years, especially so as my memory weakens, and so I commend this simple idea to all hams.  Here are some extracts from my notebooks to show you how they work for me.

The circuit diagram here shows how I connected the PC to the keying transistor inside a homebrew keyer rather than fit another transistor inside the D-connector. Seemed like a good idea at the time (1989). I really need to change it now since I don’t always have the keyer in use, and it needs to be earthed to the strobe line to prevent random key-down nonsense at boot time.

The pages below refer to contests I entered in 1990. The photo of a 2m masthead preamp takes me right back to that VHF Field Day when we lost a good hour right at the start of the contest thanks to a wayward blob of solder being pointed at by Chris or Ian. Grrr. We stopped using masthead preamps after that incident.

Starting at the rear of the notebook and working forward until the book is full (like I said, I’m a scientist!), I record the contests I’ve entered year -by-year. Here’s the page for 1988 when I started keeping the notebooks. I was living in Leicester and belonged to the Leicester Radio Society:

The second notebook is nearly full now, making an average of ten years’ experimentation per notebook . I guess the records set by Marconi, Hertz and other genuine radio experimenters are safe!

"Be a collector of good ideas,
but don't trust your memory.
The best collecting place for
all of the ideas and information
that comes your way
is your journal."

Jim Rohn