Welcome to K1FRC’s Ham Radio Shack on Airchexx. If you’re here, you probably are a ham, or you have some interest in becoming one. This page is dedicated to a few things I like, and some ham radio content.
Welcome to K1FRC’s Ham Radio Shack on Airchexx. If you’re here, you probably are a ham, or you have some interest in becoming one. This page is dedicated to a few things I like, and some ham radio content.
Below are pictures of the toys in my shack. My “Shack” doubles (or, triples) as the main studio for HitOldies.net, a Classic Hits internet Station, Airchexx.com, where I edit all the audio for the online museum, and K1FRC, my home station.
I’m on HF, VHF and UHF. See the rigs below.
Below is my Ham Radio Log. This only goes back to June 2020 when I got back on the HF bands.
Radios
The Icom IC-718 shown here is still in the shack, but until I get a new power supply, it stays off. Hopefully, by Summer ’22, I’ll have a new power supply and I’ll build a larger, perhaps half-wave 40 meter dipole and use the 718 for SSB contacts.
The Icom IC-7000 is my work horse. Although it works on HF, plus UHF and VHF, I only use it on HF. The antenna (not shown) is a 20 meter dipole that I built in May 2021. It works great!
For VHF and UHF, I’m using the Yaesu FTM400XD. These seem to be very popular rigs. Worked great when I had it installed in my car last year. Here at home, we are very low elevation, but I’m still able to hit about 6 repeaters here. This includes NOAA Weather Radio band, plus I can hear Air Band and Fire/Police, although many communities are using digital and the rig doesn’t decode that.
For my reciever, I’ve got what I consider one of the BEST Software Defined Recivers money can buy for the power. The SDRPlay RSPdx is contained in the little box you see in the photo. There are two regular 75ohm antenna connections for two separate HF antennas, and a BNC connection for the commerical FM, 2 meter and 16 centimeter bands. Strangely enough, my Winegard TV/FM beam doesn’t work as well on FM with an signal amplifier than the 6 meter dipole that’s currently connected to it! Go figure!
Also shown is the Windows interface. All the receiver functions are accessible in this window. The fact that the laptop its installed on (this thing connects via USB connection) has 16 gigabytes of installed RAM, makes the RSPdx more powerful than any tabletop radio around. The only drawback to the whole system is the close proximity that the antennas are to the commercial power lines on the street. There’s a lot of computer digital noise along with 60 Hz noise that still gets through on occasion, even with the antennas strung up in the back yard.
