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 we hope to get an 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 is home-brew from 2006 running on Windows 10. 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 with elevated radials. The second 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 2 S points better on 20m than the quarter wave vertical.

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 quite a narrow bandwidth. Presently I am building the remote tuning unit and will then use a Yaesu rotator to turn it with.