LAST UPDATED: 2nd February 2012

Welcome to my shack! This is the room (or rather part of a room) where all the radio gear is located. I have arranged my equipment so that it is easy to use and everything I need to adjust is within reach. Having an efficient layout is very important, there is nothing worse than having to stand up, stretch or reach over to adjust a control, especially when you are in the middle of a contest or chasing that elusive DXCC. My equipment is stacked vertically (as opposed to the more common side-by-side arrangements usually seen), which allows me to arrange my equipment in a very small space whilst retaining usability. The images below detail the various important components of my radio gear. The main radio is an Icom IC-756pro (the original ‘pro’ version) which covers HF and 6m. I have used Icom gear for a good many years now and rate it very highly. To get the most out of my equipment, I use some ancillary equipment such as a Vectronics VC300 ATU to match the various antennas to somewhere near 50 Ohms. The SEM Multifilter is an audio filter that I use exclusively in ‘peak’ mode for CW, this gives a real boost to weak signals and pulls them out of the noise. Good headphones are a necessity and for HF work, the Kenwood HS-5’s (see image below)must rate amongst the best. The are not cheap, but boy do they work! They are no good for hi-fi listening as the frequency response has been tailored specifically for communications. The MFJ1026 phaser is used in conjunction with the main antenna and the active loop to remove local noise, which is does very well indeed! 

ANTENNAS:

The main antenna is a 20m long OCF (Off Centre Fed) Dipole in an inverted Vee/L configuration due to the length restriction of the garden. The apex of the OCF is 10m above ground. I purchased this antenna as a ‘short’ OCF that covered from 20m through to 6m. However after a few weeks of use I decided to extend the antenna so that it would cover 40m (having done some  careful calculations to ensure it would fit in the available space. This antenna was originally 10.5m long but I replaced the shorter, 3.5m, wire with a 13m wire. It has a slightly different element length ratio than the smaller one (which was 3:1). The longer element is now sloping at about 45 degrees instead of a much shallower slope, which could only be achieved by lengthening the support pole at the fence post from 3m to 5m or more, which at this time is impractical. Above are various shots of the OCF/Windom configuration. The drawing gives more detail of the actual installation. The SWR on 40, 20, 17 and 10m are all 2:1 or below, which is acceptable. 30 and 15m are extremely high and 12m is around 3-4:1. Now that I have an ATU I can tune all bands, and show a good SWR to the radio (and hence keep the PA stresses due to impedance mismatch to a minimum).

The other HF antenna used here is a Wellbrook ALA1530s active loop with a diameter of 1m. This is mounted at 3m above ground on my ‘antenna tree’ (a 10m high dead tree with the branches cut off by a previous occupier!) In an ideal world the antenna should be rotatable to take advantage of it’s excellent bi-directional nulls but mine is on a fixed mount and attached to the tree so rotating it would be an issue, but if I do need to move it I can rotate it to some extent by hand (but as this requires a spanner and a step ladder, it doesn’t happen very often!).  As frequency increases the directional properties of the loop become less apparent (except for local noise) and I am able to hear stations from all headings. Yes it is expensive, but having used it for a good while, I can say that the expense is justified. This one antenna covers me from LW right up to 6m (although being so low it does not work nearly as well as it did at my old QTH where it was at 14m and in the clear also this one has a fair bit less gain at 6m than my old one (the ALA330s)). The ALA1530 is mainly used for receiving frequencies up to 7 MHz on the main receiver, as a general purpose and DRM antenna for the Racal and SDR radios, and as a ‘noise’ pickup antenna for use with the MFJ noise canceler, a job which it does very well (being closer to the ground it picks up electrical noise from surrounding houses, such as plasma TV’s and PC’s, usually more strongly than the OCF and allowing me to null out or reduce most of the worst noise sources down to an acceptable level.)

I installed a dedicated 6m antenna in preparation for the Sporadic E season, which has been in progress for a few weeks now. I used my Windom last year and it worked well and allowed me to hear signals from the Caribbean and North America amongst others. I am not in a situation where I can put up a yagi for 6m but a sloping wire dipole is just about acceptable (I hope!). The top is at about 9m and the bottom is about 7m up and it is in the clear. It is facing about East, maybe slightly north of East, and should have some directionality towards that direction (of course it does mean I potentially lose out to the West (i.e. USA) but it shouldn’t be too bad. Reception tests on the local beacons show an increase of about 3 s -points on the nearer one and on the farther one, which is almost due West of here, there is not much between them. I think the dipole is slightly stronger but, and this is a big but, the dipole has a lower noise level so signals at the same strength sound quite a bit clearer/stronger. It will be interesting to compare the two side by side during the Es season. Below is an image of the 6m sloping dipole. The right angled wire above is the HF OCF dipole, detailed above. The air core choke is further down the feeder than I wanted (it should be at the feedpoint, but it is so far down that it is not visible in the image), but I had wound it already and I wanted to test the antenna. When I service/adjust the antennas I will move the choke up to the feedpoint. It is a simple 4 turn choke about 3” in diameter, wound over a plastic drinks beaker (which was then removed after the choke was secured. It is important that the choke is ‘solenoid’ wound (the turns are side-by-side) rather than ‘scramble’ wound where the coax is just coiled up with turns overlapping. The solenoid method of winding, although trickier to do increases the impedance of the choke, which is the whole purpose of the choke in the first place (any signals on the outer braid of the coax are literally choked off and cannot travel any further down the feeder). This method also minimizes inter-turn coupling.

Latest addition(s) to the antenna ‘farm’ came in early August when I decided to improve my Band 2 broadcast radio set up. I had tried various wire antennas with varying success (Sporadic E from Southern Europe was received easily), but I felt I needed something a bit better. To that end I purchased a 5 element Yagi that covers 87-108MHz. There are many models/manufacturers of VHF yagi available so choosing one meant doing some research. As this antenna was to be installed inside, I had no worries about mechanical build quality, which lead me to buy a cheaper one than perhaps I would have (if I had planned on mounting it on the chimney then build quality and durability would have been a key issue). I discovered that I could purchase a 5 element Yagi of one make for the same price as a 3 element of another make. The 3 element was better built and, in all honesty, probably a better performer, but that wasn’t my main concern. A 5 element Yagi from this superior manufacturer would have set me back double what I paid for mine. As I said, performance wasn’t a key issue - WHY? Being mounted in the attic, the radiation pattern was very likely to be distorted and would probably negate any advantage the more expensive antenna had. Plus, there is not enough room to rotate the beam, so I don’t mind if it picks up off the back/sides a bit. The bit of luck I had was that the only direction I could really mount it was facing South East/North West (I chose SE as I want to take advantage of any continental openings). I did find that the beam did not seem to be very happy when horizontal, faring little better than my turnstile, and worse on a few signals. This was doubtless due to the proximity of various structures in the attic. Mounting it vertically made a big difference. I am now hearing stations that I have never heard before, it is just a pity that I have pretty much missed this years Es season on band 2. Still there are sometimes openings later in the year. Having experimented with an attic dipole, I decided that a better antenna was in order so that I could use my SDR properly. To this end I purchased a 9:1 unun (unbalanced to unbalanced transformer) and ran a 10m (approx) length from about 2m inside the attic to outside and to the far end of the garden (about 8m further). The ‘ground’ side of the unun was connected to a 4m length of wire (in fact it was a multiple core wire that was also cut to 2.5m and 3m, usefully)  to act as a counterpoise - trying to achieve proper earthing being pointless from that height. The antenna works well, particularly on the bands above 14MHz. However being partially indoors, it does pick up a fair bit of noise. If our TV is off though, the noise level is generally acceptable and it is certainly better than the attic dipole. Of course the main antenna is quieter, as the feedpoint is as far from the house as possible.It is important to have as much choice as possible when it comes to antennas - even a ‘make do’ antenna (like my attic dipole) can produce surprises, and just sometimes you might be able to hear something on a second antenna that is not audible on your main antenna (it could have a null in the direction of the station you are trying for or may not pick up an interfering signal as strongly for instance). Also, antennas quite often work on bands they are not designed for, just experiment, it’s fun and you learn an awful lot about what works and what doesn’t!

Some Receivers and Transceivers from my Ham Radio ‘Career’

Below are some of the receivers and transceivers I have owned or have been used in my shack over the past 30 or so years. There are some real classics here, examples of which sometimes pop up on eBay. Beware though as the older models may well need some kind of work doing to them to get them back to their former glory, or even to work at all. The older ones may need leaky capacitors changing or need to be operated on a low voltage for a period of time, using a variac. The voltage can be increased over a period of days. It would be best to avoid projects like this unless  you are experienced in restoring old electronic equipment - or you know someone who is and can guide you through the pitfalls (such as the very high voltages that can exist in valve/tube equipment and chassis that carry full mains voltage etc)..

The Eddystone s640 was the first receiver I used. It was my mothers receiver when she was an SWL back in the 60’s and early 70’s. I had it hooked up to a rather poor wire antenna whilst I learned the craft of Shortwave listening. The 640 had been used a lot, my mother had amassed quite a few log books and over 3000 prefixes (that was quite a feat in those days), it was a bit deaf up on 15 and 10m but gave me a good idea of how to tune signals and use the available controls to make the signals as readable as possible.

Ahh the Barlow Wadely XCR30, what an unusual radio that was, but i have to say it was a darned fine receiver. It was a real dx portable. It could resolve SSB and thanks to the Wadely loop system had virtually no drift. This, coupled with good sensitivity made it an excellent radio. I used to sneak it into school in my bag and go into an unused upstairs classroom during my lunch break to listen to 20m dx. I heard lots of places, including Brazil and America. Not difficult really, but to a 12/13 year old boy it was amazing. Some of my teachers were quite impressed, others were not so! Wish I still had this one, they command a high price these days if they come up for sale.

The KW Viceroy, I had quite a few QSO’s with one of these during the first few years of having my full license. I used it with a Grundig Satellit 3000 (see below) as a receiver as the Viceroy either didn’t have one or it didn’t work - I can’t remember which. Switching between tx and rx was done manually with a coax antenna switch - quite often I would forget to switch it back to receive afterwards. As you can imagine, I didn’t do pile ups etc back then!

The venerable Grundig Satellit 3000 graced my shack for many years, until I sold it a couple of years ago - it was starting to show it’s age, well it was over 20 years old and had been used a lot. It was great on broadcast reception as it had 3 bandwidths (the narrow one was just an audio filter though), an antenna matching circuit, and it was the first radio to be equipped with a digital readout. Oh, and the sound quality was excellent, thanks to the large speakers and separate bass and treble controls. The one area it fell down on was SSB. It drifted like the clappers and you would have to chase a signal about. Some of this was due to the rotary drum used to change bands, the contacts would get dirty and make poor contact.

I quite like the TS120v (which is the 10 watt non WARC version of the TS130s), even though it was a single conversion superhet, it was still a nice receiver to use. One thing the TS120/130 possessed was IF shift which was really useful in removing QRM. This was my dads radio (we were both SWL’s back then) and it was hooked up to a Mosely 3 ele tribander at 30 feet or a 15m inverted L for the low bands. I remember that at the time Radio Tirana used to be a pain as it broadcast on 7065kHz, right in the middle of the 40m phone band and I leant how to zero beat a signal with this radio.

The Yaesu FR50 and it’s accompanying transmitter the FL50 were in my dads shack before the TS120 (above). Being an older radio, I seem to remember it was valved. I can’t remember the quality of the receiver as I was only very young when I used this. They do come up for sale every now and then. Unlike the TS120, this had AM so could be used to listen to the broadcast stations on high end of 40m and of course the AM stuff on top band.

Another Satellit from my collection, this is the 2000. It was a good, solid radio and performed very well. Is was a broadcast radio rather than a dx machine as it lacked SSB - although you could plug in an external BFO, if you had one. The sliders on these used to get very noisy and were not that easy to replace as you needed to remove a good portion of the radio to get to them. As a broadcast radio, it worked very well, and the massive rod antenna no doubt helped with the signals, although you could attach an external wire if necessary. The difficulty with this, and the other Satellits is their size, they are huge and heavy! Put one on your desk and you will find that you have lost most of the space on it. That said, they were built like tanks and were reliable except for the odd nuance, such as the sliders as mentioned earlier.

This is the FT101’B’, mine was blue, which was unusual for a ham rig. I had loads of QSO’s on this back in the mid 80’s (even then it was old!) although being a hybrid, quick band changes were not possible as the finals had to be plate and loaded, which took time as there was the preselector to peak, then tuning the plate and load for a dip whilst on low power and then final tuning at high power (if I remember correctly). Bit deaf on 10m - also had 11m as standard for some reason!

After a break of a few years I got back into radio and this was the first radio I used. This had the 10m crystals changed to 11m by the previous owner (a cb-er I think!) and had an intermittent audio fault on transmit - however CW worked without problem so this is the mode I used and came to love. I worked many, many countries with this radio, and it’s matching ATU. It also had transverters for 6, 2 and 70cms but I was unable to use these as I didn’t have the correct wiring or the 10m crystals.

The DX70 was the first radio I purchased new, and it did me proud for quite a time. I did miss some of the features that the larger radio’s had, such as proper narrow CW filters, rather then the audio filters the DX70 had. Still it was good fun and got me onto 6m for the first time.

The Satellit 1400 was a radio I had dreamed of owning since my early days as a listener. I remember reading ‘Shortwave magazine’ and ‘Practical Wireless’ back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and they often showed pictures of the reporters and their set up. One picture caught my eye, it was of a guy called Simon Hamer (from Wales I think) and he used a Satellit 1400. I looked and thought that the 1400 was a superb looking radio and he heard a lot of DX - it was then I decided that I would own one one day. Nice receiver, not the best but good, especially for a ‘portable’ - it’s a big radio so portable is a matter of opinion.

Unusual receiver the Satellit 600, it has a motor driven preselector. The motor could be switched off to allow manual adjustment which is just as well because the motor drive tends to tune it just off so requires manual peaking. It has a rich deep sound as is typical with the Satellit series. Was a respectable performer on AM and SSB, stable enough to allow digimodes to be decoded on a PC. I had this one for quite a while before parting with it to finance the next radio.

I had the HRO in the time between getting my class B license and getting my full license (a year) and I used it extensively on 80 and 160m where it worked like a dream. I used a 40m random wire with it, which no doubt helped! The HRO’s were a unique design which required coil packs to be changed when you wanted to change from one band to another. Quite a novel approach and cut down on the complexity of the front end of the receiver, and thereby reduced the cost. I had a full set of coil packs that took the HRO from 50kHz up to 30MHz. The graph on the front of the coil packs was used for determining frequency - you took the number indicated on the big dial and looked that up on the graph - not the easiest frequency display!

The IC756 came into my shack after the IC746 it came from a friend who had used it mobile and had worked a lot of DX on SSB. As a consequence it had filters for SSB - I was into CW so swapped them for narrow CW filters - the 756 had a drawback that you could only fit a very limited number of filters. The other problem is that the display gets blue lines after a while. Most 756’s now have this problem.

A shack in a box - transmits from 160m up to 2m at 100w in all modes, also has AF DSP, like the 756. I got the 746 after the DX70 and was impressed by it, however the downside is the bandscope is not real time, the rx is muted when it does a sweep, whereas the 756’s bandscope was free running all the time - great for spotting dx. I liked the 746 and have stuck with Icom ever since - going on to the 756 then the 756 pro that I use now (that has IF DSP - no expensive filters to buy!).

The Sony ICF2001D (or 2010 in USA) was a great radio. I owned it for a long time until it stopped working one day, the PLL died and could not be resurrected. This set travelled with me wherever I went and I heard so much on it. 32 memories, good filters, AM sync and switchable USB/LSB made this a real classic. Airband was not that great but better than not having it at all. Responded well to external antennas, wires of about 10m worked well but they were prone to static killing the front end.

This was the digital version of the Sony ICF7600, the 7600D. It was a great broadcast radio and a good dxer on MW. However trying to tune SSB was a bit hit and miss as it tuned in 5kHz steps and then had a ‘clarifier’ in the form of a thumbwheel on the side. There was no sideband selector so you had to learn to tune either above and clarify down or below and clarify up depending on which sideband you wanted. Also the clarifier did not change the frequency readout so you could be anything up to nearly 5kHz off the shown frequency. But as I said, for broadcast listening, it was a super radio.

The Sangean ATS803A came in many different guises, such as the Radio Shack DX440 and the Matsui MR4099 (I think) etc. All the same radio but with a different badge. Good radio but had some issues, such as ‘chuffing’ - the radio momentarily mutes the audio as you tune so if you are bandscanning it sounds like a train chuffing. Not the best for doing that kind of listening. These can be picked up quite cheaply now and as a bonus there are mods on the web to eliminate the chuffing and improve performance.

The Racal RA17 is a real classic. Used by the government, BBC  monitoring and many others it was, at the time, probably the best receiver available. It used the Wadley loop drift cancelling system so it was very stable and used a ‘film strip’ which had a length of 30 feet as the bandspread display so tuning was easy. These are commanding a high price these days but beware as some are suffering from old age and will need an overhaul to get them back to their former glory. One other word of advise, they are BIG - your desk will disappear when you put an RA17 on it! I had mine for a year or so but it was just too big for the available space.

The Codar CR70A was a radio I did not get on with, I think mine must have been faulty as I hardly heard anything on it (even with it’s outboard preselector). It’s a pretty basic valved receiver. It would be unfair for me to say it is particularly bad as I am sure my one was faulty, plus I have heard others give good reports on them. If you are thinking of buying one, I would check it on air first, just in case. 

Here is the Heathkit ‘Mohican’, another Iconic radio. The Mohican was offered as a kit (Heathkit were the manufacturers and they produced many kits from simple receivers to full blown transceivers and accessories). The thing with buying a radio that is made from a kit is that you have no idea how competent the person who constructed the kit was. A look inside the case should provide some answers - if it is well made, neat solder joints and tidy wiring, the chances are the person was a patient and competent constructor. Of course that may not be the case as I have seen some kits that look really untidy but work very well, and I have seen neat and tidy kits that dont!). Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware!) with any of these. The Mohican covered 500kHz-30Mhz and was ‘portable’ and had a massive built in whip. Performance was dependent on the skill of the constructor but they could perform quite well, especially given their age.

The Trio (later Trio Kenwood and finally just Kenwood) 9R59D was a very common receiver and even now there are many still around despite being nearly 40 years old. As with most of the receivers of this time it covered 500Khz-30MHz and had a seperate bandspread for the amateur bands. These were valve sets and the VFO used to drift as the set changed temperature. This was such a problem that some users modified their 9R59’s to use a screened semiconductor VFO which improved stability considerably. You should be able to pick up a decent one for about £50 or less. The one I owned did not have modifications to it and listening to SSB was dificult as I was constantly tuning to keep the signal readable. On AM broadcast it was better as the signals were not as affected by drift. They tend to lack sensitivity on the highest bands.

The Sony 7600 series were an extremely popular range of radio’s and I believe they are still in production (as the ICF 7600GR). This was about the first version (the 7600A, although the picture is of an 7600AW, they look the same). I used this radio for my first serious go at MW dxing with various loop antennas that I made (up to 1.5m square). I heard the USA and Canada many times with this one. The performance was very good, although tuning on SW was a bit tricky as the dial space was limited so you had to tune very slowly, and being analogue you were never quite sure what frequency you were on (this had to be checked by looking up the station you had heard and seeing what frequency it was on - not as easy as it sounds as there was no internet back then (and home computers were Commodore 64’s and ZX Spectrum’s) so we had to reply on publications like WRTH to give us the information we needed.