What HF home base setup are you using?

Sydthecat wrote:

Everybody needs good neighbours  sorry couldn’t resist 

Ha ha....I’m a Londoner, I’ve never watched that crap. 

Not as impressive as some of the setups here, but nevertheless my little piece of 'heaven'

(Still a bl**dy mess and that was after a tidy up!)

Victor wrote:

Not as impressive as some of the setups here, but nevertheless my little piece of 'heaven'

(Still a bl**dy mess and that was after a tidy up!)

That’s pretty cool and retro looking.....I’ll have to update mine now I have the big amp all hooked up.

That's because it is all 'retro' Jeff!

Yaesu's over 40 years old, Lowe is late 1980's I think and the 'Scope is 1970 vintage, (8 valves too!)
I think I bought the main PC back in 2009!

Does the job though and most of it cost me next to b*gger all, (not much income as a cripple! )


Look forward to seeing a pic of your amp Jeff. Is it a nice big room warmer?

Victor wrote:

Look forward to seeing a pic of your amp Jeff. Is it a nice big room warmer?

It’d be right up your street......ancient old Dentron Clipperton-L with four big 572B tubes.

At our 400w limit, it doesn’t break a sweat. 

Oh you beauty Jeff!

Haven't seen one of them in years. Pity you can't post the smell up too, bet it's gorgeous when those valves warm up!
A real, proper warm roomer mate. Look forward to it

Yaesu FTDX10 FT450D KL505  KL703

Yaesu FT-817, MH-36 mic, PA-100 chinese 100watt amp, maas sps-330-II, 1:49 balun with "some" wire (23 meters) diagonal. 

looking to swap this al this year for something bigger, but always Yaesu!

greetings from a cold white Holland

This is my Livingroom shack - can watch TV, use the radio, use the gas fire, and if needed - kip on the couch while FT8 is running lol - to be fair, I tried it just to see if I could set my rig up, not used it in ages.
Station users with OCD - sorry about that lampshade! It does straighten up when I close the curtains at night lol:-)

Here is my radio area....  Just selling off some of this, and moving to another room in the house.

My shack must add photos of the CB now I'm back in to it.
The shack is my old astrophotography observatory, not really big enough but will do.

My HF/VHF FT8/FT4 setup, IC7300 HF and a 7100 for VHF

TS480SAT, FT747Gx, FT101ZD Euro spec but with 10/11/12m added, FT818, a Plessey gen con TxCr which also covers down to VLF by design, AT-5888, and a token IC-7300. If you count transverter linked, too many 30 MHz upwards to list including digital voice beyond C4FM and DMR.

Antenna wise, using the set of sleeved dipoles I use portable and a few STLs along with full size loops on 20m upwards. Oh I forgot, the true long wire circumnavigating the front and rear gardens over the roof upwards of 300m in total (yes, it took some creativity to hide that much split T&E cable).

But I still favour the long wire out of sentiment, as it was my first antenna, the mag loop for a less razor bandwidth, and the sleeved dipoles for simplicity. I've got a set of homebrew HF collinear antennas too, but I bring them out for contesting as I'm short of antenna farm space.

@Victor - well that's a nice bit of retro gear I remember well. I had a Lowe Rx too at one time, predated yours by a few gens, which was an early pseudo synthesis example using the dreaded Wadley loop type PLL. I'm sure I've got my original CM Howes 14Mhz DxcR build around somewhere buried - now that's an example of retro simplicity. It was more fun to use than the Lowe, but once I gutted the WL out of the Lowe and put in a proper PLL, it was an object of pride.

Keeping the spirit of the radio as a hobby definitely means having a few classic items as well, keeps you feet on the ground and there's a rich but affordable legacy array to choose from if you can avoid stuff being sold by 'collectors' who'll never really appreciate what they squander. I never sell my older gear - if I'm parting ways with it, it's given to a newbie or someone who could do with a decent receiver as that's often how we all mostly got our first commercial proper set.

peetassen wrote:

Yaesu FT-817, MH-36 mic, PA-100 chinese 100watt amp, maas sps-330-II, 1:49 balun with "some" wire (23 meters) diagonal. 

looking to swap this al this year for something bigger, but always Yaesu!

greetings from a cold white Holland

well.. after a few months working with my Kenwood TS 570DG, i wanted something new, realy new. so i bought myself the Icom 7300, brandnew, with a brandnew Hi-endfed 10-80 meters, already bought myself the Daiwa cn501H2, needed a new psu, so i bought myself the Maas spa-8350, then i wanted to have a nanovna, wich i ordered from china (works very nice and not expensive at all.. 
so the main thing is, the money is gone, but my setup is a setup to love.
will shoot some pics later this week.

@peetassen - unless you actually need whatever resale value you can get on the FT-817 towards a replacement, I strongly suggest you keep it.

You see, the FT-xxx portables are radios you never get real value of unless you hang on to them - very pricey new, and of the pre 818 FT's, the 817 was around a good while so far from scarce which means even as a PX, you throw away a lot of cash.

Everyone I know who's owned an FT portable go so attached to their convenience that selling was like the craziest option.

I've only got the 818 because my first choice which was an earlier 10/6/2/70cms example predating the 817 was literally silly money used if you could get one, so I rationally weighed up 817ND used costs vs 818ND new cost and bought the 818.

But I'll never sell mine, just as my best local source of my preferred earlier set was not going let his go for any price out of sentiment.

And when you consider the 81x series as pretty much the tail end of quality portable pure analogue multimode sets, surely it deserves a collection place long term that gets taken outdoors out of convenience and for old times sake?

Radios are coming down in cost, but such sets will always be top money cost to replace if they are of FT series quality.

Even if resale value was good, which it isn't, I'd no more sell my 818 than I'd sell my fully option specced 747GX - there's too much personal value and attachment to coldly discard for a newer flashier model. I'll maybe eventually gift the 747 to someone who needs a good quality RX to get started pre-license, but until then it's the 818's senior relative destined to stay put.

But that's me.

@A5H5ATAN1C - Thanks.

There's a couple more radios been added since, weird how an Amateur Radio licence can do that to you!

I can only thank friends and fellow Hams for their kind donations also giving thanks that my eyesight and hands haven't degenerated so much that I was still able to repair them!

I believe that as I was kindly donated such items I would pass on surplus items in a similar vein.

In a matriarchal home, (Wife, two daughters, five granddaughters!), they're unlikely to be utilised as they're not the slightest bit interested...but I have a lone Grandson who loves nothing more than playing a bit of PMR walkie action with his Grandad.

@Victor - indeed, between stuff I've been given (and I'm talking ranging from barely fit to fish gut through hen's teeth rare) and the irrational curiosity buys/trades, it's borderline crazy how become 1 gene away from hoarders in the radio and electronics game.

But for sure, when it comes to removing redundant stuff - it's as much as a gesture of respect to the kindness of those who helped you out when you gift the redundant to someone who can use it.

Sure, especially for 2M/70cms/446 and CB for the HF side, starter gear is cheap in a flooded market place - but a gifted high quality, old school, set is a great contribution to a starter shack just as getting your first proper (ancient) gen cover receiver on HF or a really sharp (relatively speaking) old but good scanner for VHF upwards opens up your window on the world.

What I always enjoyed from day dot about HF and lower, as a listener, was the sheer with window that let's you understand the world through the eyes of different cultures and lives in a way that blogs and social media could never really match.

As for old gear, most of my test gear borders on ancient bar a 90s era HP SIG gen and dual scope pair, everything else is ex-Pye/Phillips Telecom, the odd Plessey instrument and a whole set of AVO's (including a SIG gen) in mint condition and perfect alignment - from the days when everything had one job, and you had to let them warm up to stabilise first.

But those old AVO's where my starter tools test gear and I won't part with them for any money as they were instrumental to my formative successes, failures and near misses during the painfully overwhelming years of starting out. So they are as much part of my legacy gear in permanency as the best gear.

I still use my Kenwood TS-570DG had it since 2002 was last batch made great radio for DX'ing on all bands even 11M.
Easy to use.
73
Mark.

Aside, in recent years, from use of a TS480SAT, I've never really used a Trio/Kenwood old school HF rig - which is a pity, because I was impressed by the TS700G and TS2400 vhf sets. Admittedly, the 2400 (relatively new at the time) was factory stock by the much older 700G had been modded/optimised to the nth degree like the IC-211 VHF I still use for SSB base ops. So if the HF sets were anything of an HF comparable nature, not experiencing HF on Trio/Kenwood pure analogue rigs is a bit of a painful experience hole. But I guess my time using professional/military gen coverage TxCr's was a good substitute back when I was on the USAF exchange. Reflection on that, revealed a notable attitude difference between (then) Brit & US HF operators, they are seemingly obsessive ozone layer punchers (huge arrays and crazy active extremes of linears and mega ERP - a bit like certain EU ops who frequent 40m these days) vs relatively restrained Brit setups, mind you we had to be because of where our shacks were.

I can recall one linear in a comms shack where I spent time doing my CW practise live back to the States that wasn't just overkill, it was the linear equiv of Slade's typical PA stack on stage.....crazeeee days, you didn't want to be anywhere near it as it's residual EM could have stopped a mechanical clock dead.

If I ever get that power mad in my ham or cb ops you've got open permission to put a hit on me...

Massive expensive antennas on huge towers, all the power money can buy... and when the conditions are down, not a peep from the USA.

The sky above us, the great leveler.

That says it all, I guess, about the ozone layer punchers - after all, even if the right layer is effectively dead and you get a little residual reflection/skip from another active one, the loss per skip is horrendous on some bands even if the going is good, that's why we tend to use TG and SSB ham side, as SSB has some hope and TG is very conditions tolerant and you definitely don't need damn near a KW of ERP to work the world (unless maybe under a nuclear 'winter' condition or when the next reactor blowout dumps a Chernobyl level contamination level of vapourised debris into the atmosphere).

I've seen conditions, worst case, where 10/11m and down were literal morgue territory and even VHF/UHF suffered (when Chernobyl went up and the high altitude debris cloud that they conveniently denied the existence of, moved across N Europe) - so I know how bad it gets, and I was actively handheld Dxing on the 401 handheld and got caught in the rapid electrical storm and torrential rain that hit Kent about the time the conditions had rapidly died a death.

Whilst I'm equipped for up to 500W here, pre antenna passive gain, I very rarely use the output in practice - I'm happy with QRP and an antenna combo that's practical and feasibly broken down for field portable needs if the opportunity arises. In fact, aside from when I do tests to verify state, I'm usually running UK CB high and low power output levels from rigs - even the VHF/UHF stuff.

Beating the odds occasionally and grabbing the odd contact on seeming DX-dead segments is much more a challenge and a far better testament to your patience and judgment.

Now I can firsthand confirm that some of the veteran 11M heavy hitters from a certain country never used CB gear on their super DX pileups we who were there during the height of 11m propagation many years ago witnessed. One of them, at least - and at least by rep, was part of a group running similar gear, were using US spec FT101's with linears and FM mods and crazy arrays and the rich gits were using FT747GX's as the base of their crazy setups. I discovered this when I got to see one such shack when I was 'in country' to the owner. I'm not saying he ran power, but you could have run a village wide street lighting on the residual EM leaking into the shack - as the rapid near instant onset of a crippling migraine kicking in demonstrated when he fired up and did a test call.

So I'm very opposed to such people, and not just because it's egotistically fuelled unnecessarily abusive misuse on a good day.

We've all probably dreamed of such a setup, if we're honest, as our 11m DX station - thankfully reality and usually degrees of common sense or money or a iron-fisted SIG other who'll never let you get away with it kept it to a daydream. Even now I can go crazy by the standards of what we had them, away from 11m, I'm not even remotely tempted to routinely operate DX with that crazy fuelled level of egotism and greed for the dog's wotsits biggest radio log pursuit they aim for.

Just a reminder that the thread title is “ What HF home base setup are you using ? “ 

Please can we keep this thread on topic 


Thank you 

CT Admin

Base station.
Ranger 2950 Mirage, 150 watt solar panel feeding 2 12 volt storage batteries (as a power supply), Mirage M75 amp (100 watt 2 pill), 50 watt Jenson car audio speaker in a home made box and a Antron 99 without the ground plane kit 24 feet off the ground. 


Really like the fact that with this system i'm pretty much off the grid and don't have to worry about power going out (such as a blackout), the 2950 is a decent 10, 11, and 12 meter radio, and the Antron is a fairly decent antenna, have been able to talk to Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Canada and most of the United States with this setup. 

Mobile.
Cobra 148 GTL (modded for the extended frequencies), a Marco F100 Amp (150 watt 2 pill), and a Wilson 1000 Mag Mount antenna.
(used mainly for talking local when driving around).

2CT216
Or
451 the Coyote in the Mohave Desert Southern California. 

Heres my shack. Antennas are a Sirio GM for 11M and 10M. X200 for 2M and scanning. Inverted V dipole for 20M and about 90 feet of wire for SWL.