AMATEUR RADIO STATION
NEW ZEALAND
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 SDR receiver I’m currently using is SDR Console, which is uses the RTL-SDR V4 receiver and coupled to the main antenna using an SDR Switch. It’s very useful for watching the band activity, noise levels and so on.
The computer I use is an HP Z2 G4 Workstation, I7-8700K CPU, 32GB of memory, 512GB SSD, and Quadro P2000 graphics handling the 4 monitors.
Presently I only have one antenna, a 12 meter (±40ft) vertical dipole, center fed with 450 Ω twin line. It covers 80m through to 10m using the MFJ 989D tuner. It’s using a fiberglass pole for support, is guyed 3 ways and has survived bigger winds that I ever thought it would.
Under construction is the third magnetic loop I’ve undertaken. 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.
Since the beginning of 2025, I’ve been active on WSPR for the first time, so I’m just a beginner with a lot to learn! The receive/transmit is taken care of by the FT2000D and I generally run 5 watts of RF output. I use the vertical antenna (pictured below) and although it’s rather noisy on receive it does seem quite effective on transmit.
We are about 400 meters from the Tasman Sea and the top half of the vertical has a good view of the ocean out towards Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe. Towards the East and Southeast, South America and the long path to Europe our 3-level house is a very tall obstacle but North America, to the Northeast is fairly clear. Reports of transmissions are surprisingly good but it’s not receiving well due to the high noise level in comparison with the desired signals (SNR) typical of verticals. When we are using low power levels to send signals around the world the noise level is critical.
WSPR was designed to softly whisper radio signals around the world using the power of just one dragonfly.
I’m hoping that the Active Magnetic Loop I’m currently building will help reduce local noise on receive, especially if I can set it up at the back of our property where the local noise level seems lower. It will be rotatable, using a Yaesu rotator on the fiberglass mast. Hopefully, the inherent immunity to local electrical noise and the figure 8 azimuth radiation pattern can be used to null out the worst of the noise.
Update: Presently I’m not now active on WSPR but do use the various online maps to keep track of propagation. I decided that WSPR really deserves a separate station optimized for that mode and not tie up my FT2000. So, I’ll work towards that change over the summer months (in ZL 2025) and see what I can do to improve the WSPR setup.
