In 1999 I was working from home full time and had some time on my hands. Technology of all sorts has always interested me. One afternoon I happened to be at the Dr's office and spotted a copy of QST, the ARRL monthly magazine on the table. I picked it up and was fascinated at the technology that is amatuer radio. These folks are talking across continents, bouncing signals off the moon, launching satellites, and all kinds of other cool stuff. So I did a small bit of digging on the internet, grabbed a book, found out when the next Technician test was and took it. Three weeks later, the FCC website said that I had been issued the license with the call sign KC2GDG.
The rest, as they say, is history.
As a Technician, I was allowed to work on frequencies of 50Mhz and up. I was immediately fascinated by satellite work and built up a nice little sat station using a used Yaesu FT-736R I bought on Ebay. The 736 is kinda a cool radio since it comes with two modules for working the two most common VHF and UHF bands and two empty slots you can fill with other modules for other VHF/UHF bands. I spent a year or so playing on satellites and enjoying it.
Then my natural tendancy to want to have every option in a widget filled took over. I expanded the 736 with a 6M module. Then I got a yaesu FT-847 which is a nice satellite radio, covering HF, 6m, 2m and 70cm. Great radio, comes with the ability to talk to the computer for tuning which is really handy when you are trying to track satellites. Also a very nice 6M radio.
6M is an interesting band. Much of the time it is dead dead dead. Then every now and then it goes crazy with propogation and someone with a modest station can work thousands of miles away. That's what happened in the summer of 2001. I was working stations in Ireland, England, and all over Europe. Even into North Africa. It was amazing. It made me want to get my General class license so I could use the HF radio bands to talk all over the world.
But General class needed 5 words per minute of morse code. And I am hopeless at morse code. But then, in 2006 the FCC announced the removal of the requirement for morse code. I studied up, took the General exam, and then on a lark, took the Extra class exam. I passed both (getting 4 wrong on the General and 2 wrong on the Extra exam!). Feb 23rd, 2007 I went down to the ARRL HQ and turned in my paperwork at the stroke of midnight along with some other folks. I was the second Extra to get my ticket without morse code. I filed a request for KI2L the next day and was granted it shortly thereafter.
Since then I've expanded the station to include all kinds of great toys that I should get pictures of online someday. The main HF/6M radio now is a Yaesu FT-2000 with the Data Management Unit. 2M/440 USB/CW is still held down by the FT-847, while the FT-736 covers 220mhz and 1.2Ghz with added modules. A WA2AAU transverter puts the 736 on 902Mhz quite nicely. Additional transverters are either built or in the works for 2304mhz, 5432Mhz, and 10Ghz. Dedicated radios for FM operations include one each for 2m, 220, and 440. A 24 channel Yamaha mixer running through a Rane parametric EQ and Marantz audio amp ties the audio output from all of those together with the audio from the 3 computers at the desk for a complete Surround Sound experience!
Amplifiers are, of course part, of the shack, with Mirage 'brick' amps bringing the common VHF/UHF bands up to 100 or 150w, with a modified cell tower amp bringing 902 up to ~150w. A Larcan solid state TV amp provides a KW on 6M, while AM-6155/54's await installation for 2m and 220. An old Heathkit SB-200 from a hamfest rounds out the amps on HF.
Of course, no ham geek travels without radios either. I use an FT-857D in my truck along with an FT-90 in our Mini. An Icom 2700 does repeater duty in the trailer at the race track with FT-530's for the race car and the crew chief (N2NJZ). The fleet is rounded out by an Icom 2800 in my MR2. The Miata and TR6 are blissfully radioless.
The SB-200 really needs a rebuild. It's got the Harbach soft start kit in it and I have a complete set of caps and other goodies on the shelf to bring it up to more modern standards. But high voltag scares the !@#$%^&* outta me, so it is on the 'I will get to it list'
W1GHZ 2 and 3ghz transverters were built from W1GHZ pcbs. Still waiting to get an antenna up in the air.
The station control project remains in the works. My goal is to be able to hook all the radios up to the computer and use it to control all of them (switching input and output) as if it was one big radio. Problem is I like twiddling knobs too much and there really isn't a good subsitute for a real front panel...So I want to build one of those too...And creaping featurism keeps me up at night. So I'm trying to pare it back to just microphone control switching.
Microwave antennas need to be built and hung. There is a dish in the trunk of my car just waiting to go.
And the movement of all of the antennas over to a tower that isn't on the house. Someday I'll have the time and resources to put up a tower tall enough to clear the 80' trees in the yard...
Probably the most time has been spent acquiring, building, testing, and repairing test equipment. The recent forays into the microwave bands have pressured me to upgrade all of the test gear, which previously topped out at about 1ghz on a very good day. To that end, I've built a 15Ghz prescaler to work with existing frequency counters (details and PCB's may be found elsewhere). One has been built into the HP 5328A counter, based on the great design by VE2ZAZ. A second front ends the DC5010 counter in the TM5006 mainframe.
Keeping all those counters and high frequency oscillators dead on is a serious challenge. Dipping again into the resources provided by VE2ZAZ, I've recently built a 10Mhz frequency standard, which is good to 1x10-12 (one part in 1,000,000,000,000). Not bad for $30 worth of parts. It's syncronized to the GPS network, which provides some very accurate timing signals as well as GPS information. I'm also awaiting the delivery of a Thunderbolt frequncy standard, which should display similar kinds of accuracy.
Another necessary bit of test equipment when you start working on radios, not to mention radios in the microwave bands, is a good microwave spectrum analyzer. A long hunt on eBay provided an HP 8965A from, of all places, a Goodwill in Ft. Worth Texas. $45 worth of shipping later, it now resides on the workbench in my shop alongside the 1Ghz scopes and other tools.
I currently have about 25' of tower on the roof in a foldover config that I designed myself. A number of additional antennas have been added since these pictures were taken, but you get the general idea.
In order to better see, I stole an idea from elsewhere on the net and used an inexpensive video camera (obtained from my sister, who works in the machine visionindustry, but they can be had very cheaply on EBay as well) with a macro lens on a retort stand as a microscope. Displaying this on a computer monitor via a USB video capture dongle (again obtained from eBay, $15) allwed me to place components as well as do some very close inspection after assembly.
The following are not very good in terms of preofessional editing, but they do get the point across. It is clear that lighting is critical and that color vs black and white makes a significant difference.
