The “shack”, is part of the office for Webdesign Matters combined with a semi-mancave. The ham radio equipment consists of a Yaesu FT2000D (new in August 2009) along with the FT2000 speaker and a Heil Pro-Set Plus headset. There is also a Heil HM10 boom mike. Missing is an elderly Heathkit SB220 linear amplifier, but I do hope to get another amplifier up and running again soon. There is also an MFJ 989D antenna tuner. Normally I use the Heil HM10 boom mic switched to the HC5 cartridge.

The computer I use is an HP Z2 G4 Workstation, I7-8700K CPU, 32GB of memory, 512GB SSD, and Quadro P2000 graphics. I mainly use Ham Radio Deluxe software and a number of other programs, for instance HamCap, VOACap Online, WSJT-X for example.

Presently there two antennas here. One is a simple quarter wave vertical for 20mx with two elevated and tuned (to 14.2MHz) radials. It also has a small ground system of lengths of copper mesh lying on the ground. The second antenna is another vertical, a 12 metre (40ft) vertical dipole, centre fed with 450 Ω ladder line.  It covers 80m through to 10m using the MFJ 989D tuner and is about ½ to 1 S point better on 20mx than the quarter wave vertical. Both antennas are using fibreglass poles for support, the12m (40ft) one is guyed 3 ways but the ¼ λ is freestanding

In the pipeline is a magnetic loop antenna which I’m building as time permits. It is 91.5 cm (36 inches) in diameter using 12.5mm (1/2 inch) copper tubing and mainly to be used on 20m and higher bands. Early tests prove it works; it tunes well with a 1:0 to 1 SWR and a very narrow bandwidth. Presently I am building the remote tuning unit and will then use a Yaesu rotator to turn it with. Update – it all worked with remote tuning and rotating It all seemed exactly as it should. However, in A/B tests I never saw it perform better than the verticals and was usually about 10 to 15 dB down, sometimes a lot more. I reasoned that it would be unlikely to ever be better than what I already have so it was all dismantled.