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Done….finally!
30 June 2017 | by Two years ago this day we moved into our own house in Daxi and exactly two years later I can finally say that my shack is finished. Done, completed, set and sorted. After I fixed the walls and painted them bright during Chinese New Year 2016 it took more than a year before the itch of a dedicated bookshelf for all my radio stuff became too much to bear, so CNY 2017 saw this addition….
The lighting was too cold for my taste, so I made this with some old wood and LED lights I got for free from a defunct coffee house…..
Then I really got going and made shelves on top of my ham desk so I could finally stack all my rigs in one place. Heaven! The first time ever I got things organized this well. I also put in a new vent for the cables going to the outside, color coded everything et voila, we were done!
I haven’t been on air yet, but monitoring instead to see how my antennas perform reception wise. At first I used WSPR, but as there are only so many stations I switched to JT65. I have been spending quite a bit of time on pskreporter.info, which is fascinating website. Within 12 hours you can get a view of what you can receive and from where. Do it for a couple of days and you will get a feel of how good conditions are at the moment.
Even though noise on 20 meters is huge I can still hear a lot, but there is room for improvement. With the shack and antenna cables in place I can finally start working on my antennas and see if I can get the noise down a bit. Noise on 20 meters is the worst, 40 meters is fine, but I don’t have a resonant antenna for that band. The 5 meter vertical on the roof performs well for NDB DXing, but not for much else. The summer is always hot here, but I will beat the heat and make those improvements so I can work the world again this fall.
7 Responses to “Done….finally!”
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Very nicely done Hans, take a bow !!!!! Hope to hear you on the air soon,
73, Dick /W1REJ
Wow !!! Love ur neatly stacked shelves of radios. Getting organized always feels good. 73
Ziet er goed uit hans
Een
Luisteramateur uit Nederland
Great work! Looks very tidy and well organised.
What an inviting relaxing space you have created Hans! I gather your LED lights are not on a switching power supply. I wish you well in hunting down and eliminating your 20m noise. Perhaps we must try a CW sked some time…40m might be best as here in the morning, there is a good path to your part of the world around my sunrise…a good goal for the fall maybe?
Steve 73
Thanks all for the nice comment. Nothing better than an organized shack: makes working on my next project even more fun and it also speeds up the process.
@Steve: I did test the LED lights before making the ceiling light. They are switchers, but of the better kind and so far haven’t noticed any noise from them. The bare 12V LEDs draw around 250mA, so if I want to I could take out the switchers and put in linear PSUs. Difficult to find 12V linear PSUs that can supply more than one Amp or current, though.
I still need your SKCC number, Steve, so we’ll keep that goal. I hear the west coast on 40 meters fine, but can’t reach it yet.
Congratulations on your ham shack. It looks great. Thanks for sharing your story.
A ham from Inyokern, Julie Potter, W6Fia