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From A Different Perspective

  
 
 

 

My Station

The first picture is my all time favorite. FT-747GX with FC-757AT fully automatic tuner and FP-757HD power supply. I bought the complete system shortly after it was released. It was rather pricey back in the late 80's. That was by far the best auto tuner I have ever used. What used to be a wattmeter is now an RF sampler. The SWR set control is now providing a variable level output for the TEK scope and HP precision Freq counter which was helpful in the beginning but not much use now. An LDG remote antenna switch is connected to the actual switching unit outside the shack/ Only 1 coax enters the shack. This makes lightning protection much easier and cheaper as well. I moved the Heil PL2-T with GL-5 mic and shock mount out of the way for the picture. The CDE rotor controller for the Ham IV rotor sits idle as much of my time is spent on 40m and 80m with this rig. This radio gets far better quality signal reports than my FT-2000D on SSB.

 
 
 

 
   

 

 

Below you can see my primary station. At the left is the FT-2000D. The DMU and power supply are no longer in use. I run it from 4 large 12v Gel Cells in series providing just over 50V. I run a great Mac App - iSpectrum instead of the DMU. The rig has 3 uTuning units. It's a great CW station but on phone the FT-747 gets far more remarks. The 32" widescreen monitor makes viewing much easier for these tired old eyes. Note the additional LEDs on the CDE rotor cortroller. I have installed the digital option with RS-232 port. This station can be fully operated remotely. The 10 element yagi will move to the direction of the station just logged automatically. The DS-4R remote antenna switch was replaced by a serial controller to provide remote control of 4 different antennas.Tthe MFJ-986 3KW tuner is required when I operate on the phone portion of 80M and is rarely used. The ComSpkrs never show any signs of RFI. Custom computer tower is an Quad Core Intel / Mac at 3 GHZ with 16GIG Ram, (2) 1TB drives, 3 serial ports, 8 USB ports, 1050 watt PS, (4) 3.5" fans and a Nvidia graphics card with 1 GB VRAM. It does OK. It doubles as a webserver hosting my W9DKC.com person website as well as the Weather website and uploads at 1 minute intervals to NWS, PWS and WU weather databases. Snow Leopard OS running 8 real-time windows. It is connected to the WWW directly thru a T1 trunk. Sorry for the bad angle on the picture. On top of the antenna switch (behind the Vantage Pro2 Plus weather console) is an MFJ paddle key and to the left of the computer tower is the Signalink USB interface for digi modes. Left of that (barely visable) is an intercom to the house. In front of the speaker - a weighted J37 straight key. My favorite of all. On the speaker is my old friend - 2002 Kentucky Derby Festival shot glass. Now, where did I hide my bottle of Courvoisier? The green meters below indicate the Alpha is ready to go. The Radio Control/Logger is MacLoggerDX. Awesome! You can see on the local weather radar it's a rainless day in Tampa (not so common this summer).