I always enjoy seeing the ham shacks of others so I put together this page to show some of my shack photos. Generally, they are not very impressive since I take a rather minimalist approach to my hamming. My station seems to shrink rather then grow over the years. Also, since I never buy much additional equipment I tend to move the old stuff around a lot to make it feel new.
I've been at my present location since December of 2001. All that I have outside for antennas is my simple inverted-L antenna. Even though it is undetectable to most spying eyes it has worked acceptably well on all MF/HF bands. I even have a couple of awards for work on 160m which normally would be unheard of on a city sized lot with QRP power levels. Most of my success with this simple station is due to the use of CW, not the performance of the antenna. I would still prefer to have many acres for a true antenna farm. However, I am plenty active on the air. I also have a few VHF/UHF antennas in my attic that gets me by on the higher bands.
Back to basics here. My Heathkit HR-1680 receiver, IBM, Thinkpad 760XL notebook computer, SW-40+ as my main rig, Bencher paddles, Soviet TKF straight key, old nixie tube General Radio Model 1192-B Frequency Counter to verify my frequency, homemade solar charged battery pack, and a old Kenwood TM421A UHF rig. The SW-40+ is totally solar powered and puts out 2.5 watts when the battery is fully charged. To the right I have a small 19" table rack with my Rycom R1307A/GR VLF receiver with an assortment of keys and QRP rigs on top. Also have my Metcal soldering iron near the keys.
I know, this isn't my usual QRP station. I dug the Drake's out of the closet and cleaned them up. They seem to be performing nicely. However, I still can't transmit over 50 watts because I don't have Sylvania 6JB6A tubes in the PA and these old Drakes are said to put out full power only with Sylvania tubes. My QRP rigs are sitting on a shelf and I pull them out and hook them up as needed. In fact I use the QRP rigs more often then not because with the present PA tubes the efficiency of my Drake T-4XB is horrible.
If you started at the bottom you may have noticed that my shack seems to be shrinking. I guess it is due to my minimalist mentality. I'm still as active as I every was however.
My main HF antenna is not much to look at really. It is configured as an Inverted-L with the vertical section of about 6 meters and a horizontal section of 14 meters. I use it on all bands from 160m to 6m. On 40m it is basically an end fed half wavelength antenna and it seems to work the best on that band. I am feeding it against an 8 foot ground rod with no radials. A number of radials will most certainly improve 160m and 80m but I haven't gathered up the nerve yet to dig up the yard yet. The fact that the builder ran the home's power lines diagonally across my potential radial field does not help my motivation!
Please keep in mind that this is not a high performance antenna. However, it is extremely convenient and it allows me to get on all bands and still not be at war with the HOA. Given the circumstances it has done a very good job for me. I still play with a lot of other single band antenna such as dipoles, small loops, and end fed half wavelength antennas in the trees to keep things interesting.
