Hi, I am Tony I0JX
My radio station

A friend of mine keeps buying radio equipment, new or surplus, and stocking them in a room with no apparent criterion. More than an amateur radio station, that room looks like something in between an ham radio store and a surplus outlet!

It is not easy to turn a great deal of radio equipment into a nice station. In my opinion to achieve that goal a station must be:

• rational: one shall not amass radios here and there in the station; on the contrary all radios shall be properly paired so as to form separate lines, each comprising a transmitter, a receiver, possibly a linear, and all required accessories (keyer, microphone, headsets, etc.)

• consistent; all items forming part of a line shall be consistent with each other. A first criterion is to only pair equipment having the same age, e.g. you should not hook up a Collins S-line to a latest generation solid-state linear. But having a similar age is not enough; for instance you cannot pair a novice-style crystal transmitter with a professional and expensive receiver, as they were conceived for separate markets. One can easily figure out a lot of other possible inconsistency cases

• only comprising selected items: in a nice radio station one shall only see selected items and no junk (e.g. very cheap SWR meters and switches, obsolete equipment such ar RTTY keyboards, unusable radios, etc,). Worse if one can see things that have nothing to do with amateur radio (e.g. TV sets, recorders, Hi-Fi sets, plain FM radios, etc.)

• all ready-to-go: it shall be possible to immediately connect any line to the antenna(s) at the flip of a switch. Moreover, all lines shall be fully hooked-up for instant operation in all possible modes and bands (in other words there shall be nothing to connect manually e.g. AC mains, CW keyer, microphone, headsets, PTT control for the linear, PC sound card, etc.)

• functional: every line must work perfectly and be properly aligned on all bands and modes. It should never occur that e.g. a line cannot be used on 40 meters because of RF feedback into the microphone, or that a linear amplifier does not work well on 10 meters because of too high an input SWR, etc.

• original: all radios shall be fully original, from both the mechanical (original knobs, no extra holes, etc.) and the electrical viewpoints (only fully reversible modifications should be allowed)

• documented: a manual, original if possible, shall be available for each piece of equipment. Any modification and/or customization shall be faithfully annotated (on a separate sheet of paper, do not spoil the manual!).

Having several legacy radio lines, in addition to modern equipment, I had to create four interconnected operating positions. This costed me quite a complex station layout.

The main elements of my radio station are described below.

• HF:
  • Main transceiver: Kenwood TS-950SDX with all available filters
  • Linear amplifiers: for 3.5 ... 28 MHz: Henry 4K-Ultra with a single 8877. For 1.8 and 50 MHz: my re-design of a surplus russian amplifier with a single GU-43B
  • Spare transceivers: Yaesu FT-847 with Collins CW and SSB filters and Yaesu FT-100D
  • Spare linear amplifier: Kenwood TL-922 with a pair of 3-500Zs (for 1.8 ... 28 MHz)
  • Antennas: Mosley Yagi PRO-67-C, end-fed inverted vee for 80 m, resonating tower for 160 m

  

  Henry 4K-Ultra with a Bird Wattcher on its top,
  connected to a Bird 4715 wattmeter

• 50 MHz:
  • Main transceiver: Yaesu FT-847 with Collins CW and SSB filters
  • Main linear amplifier: my re-design of a surplus russian amplifier with a single GU-43B
  • Spare transceivers: Yaesu FT-100D and Yaesu FT-736R with CW filter
  • Spare linear amplifiers: home built with a single 8875 and Mirage A1015
  • Antennas: two 5 el. Tonna Yagis, one vertical

Russian amplifier with a Bird Wattcher on its top, connected
to a Bird 4715 wattmeter. The 50-MHz home built amplifier is on its left

• 70 MHz (still waiting for license):
  • Transceiver: modified Ten-Tec transverter mod. 1209, 10W output
  • Linear amplifier: home built with four 6JB6As in push-pull / parallel
  • Antenna: modified channel-B TV 4-element Yagi, pointing to UK  / Denmark
     
• VHF / UHF:
  • Main transceiver: Yaesu FT-736R (144 / 432) with CW filter
  • Chatting & packet: Yaesu FT-5100 (144 / 432 MHz), Kenwood TR-7930 (144 MHz)
  • Spare transceivers: Yaesu FT-100D and Yaesu FT-847 with Collins CW and SSB filters
  • Linear amplifiers: Mirage B1016 (144 MHz), Mirage D1010 (430 MHz)
  • Antennas: for 144: 11 el. (H) and 9 el. (V). For 430: 19 el. (H) with Dressler GaAs FET preamplifier and 19 el. V. Two verticals for 144 / 430 MHz

• General monitoring:
  • Receiver: Icom IC-R8500 receiver (0.1 - 1,999 MHz)
  • Antenna: discone
   
• Digital modes:
  • PC: Pentium 4, 2.5 GHz, 512-MByte RAM, 2x80-GByte HD
  • TNCs: AEA DSP-2232 and PK-96

• Mobile:
  • Transceiver: Yaesu FT-100D (HF / 50 / 144 / 430 )
  • Antenna: ATAS-100 and 2-meter magnetic whip for 2, 6 and 10 meters (see my modification for those bands) 

• Legacy radio lines:

• best for CW contests: Drake C-line, consisting of a T-4XC transmitter (with DX Engineering speech processor), an R-4C receiver (with noise blanker, a wide choice of IF filters & crystals, including the Sherwood 125 Hz and the 16-pole Sherwood 2.1 kHz, digital readout and Fox-Tango modifications for product detector, audio amplifier and power supply), an FS-4 synthesizer, a W-4 wattmeter, an MN-2000 tuner, a Vibroplex paddle, an AEA keyer and a Shure 444 microphone.  I also have a Drake TR-4CW/RIT (with noise blanker, and a DX Engineering speech processor) and its own Shure 444 microphone. Both radios can be switched into an Henry 2K-Ultra linear with two 8873s, Eimac conduction-cooled triodes

• best for the SKN (Straight Key Night): Drake 2-B receiver with 2-BQ Q-multiplier, EICO-723 novice-style 60W CW transmitter with the matching EICO-722 VFO, and obviously a straight key

• best for the AM window on 29 MHz: Geloso line AM/CW only, consisting of a G. 4/214 receiver, a G. 222-TR transmitter and an Astatic Silver Eagle microphone

• best for the good old days feeling: full Collins S-line, consisting of a 75S-3B receiver (with 200-Hz and 500-Hz CW filter option and AADE DFD2-S digital display), a 32S-3 transmitter (with DX Engineering speech processor), a 30L-1 linear with 572Bs in place of 811s, a 30S-1 linear with a single Eimac 4CX1000A, a 312B-4 station console, a 302C-3 wattmeter, and an SM-1 microphone

• best for 1940-style QRP operations: a Meissner Signal Shifter Deluxe (6F6 oscillator and 6L6 doubler) delivering about 8 W to the antenna, paired to an HRO receiver with a Kahn SSB adapter. Hooked up to a Vibroplex bug

Note: the Signal Shifter is a gift of I1PL (now I0XXR)

• best to feel myself younger: this actually was my very first rig, an Hallicrafters line consisting of an SX-146 receiver (with optional CW & AM filters and calibrator), an HT-46 trasmitter (with VOX option) a Datong speech processor and a Shure 444D microphone. I was lucky to find my very rig more than 30 years after I had sold it! Below, you see that radio hooked up to a Gonset GSB-201 linear amplifier.

The GSB-201 has four 811As in parallel, with an input-choke power supply. A real beauty, that has nothing to do with those modern amplifiers advertised on QST using the same tubes!

• best to relive the emotion of early RTTY days: a Teletype model TG-7-B (thanks I0AFF) hooked up to a National HRO-500 general-coverage receiver, with an RTTY demodulator & HAL scope

Latest additions to my collection of old stuff are an Heathkit HW-101 transceiver (the famous Hot Water one-oh-one) with its optional CW filter and a Shure 444 microphone and an Hammarlund HQ-110 receiver,

a National NC-125 receiver,

an Hallicrafters SX-101A receiver and a Yaesu FRDX400 / FLDX400 line with a Shure 444 microphone (this is actually the property of I0WTD),

an Hallicrafters line, comprising an SX-117 receiver with the HA-10 LF/MF Tuner and an HT-44 transmitter with a Turner microphone and the HA-8 Splatter Guard.

and another novice-style line comprising a Mosley  CM-1 receiver with an Heathkit GD-125 Q-multiplier (not shown) and an Hallicrafters HT-40 transmitter with a military T-368 VFO.

In addition to old ham radio equipment, I also like to collect some military radios. Below you can see a BC-348 receiver

and an RBZ receiver.

To some extent, I also  like to collect old test equipment too. Look at this twin-needle meter, part of an RF power & SWR test set built by the Technical Materiel Corporation (TMC) that I bought at an hamfest.

My HF antenna

Picture below taken at http://maps.live.com/ shows the very place where my HF antenna is mounted. Within the black circle you can see the antenna aluminum tubes at tower top. Coordinates are:

• lat.: 41º 56'  19.54" N  or  +41.93876
• long.: 12º 32'  36.57" E  or  +12.543492

The Mosley PRO-67-C is a 7-element Yagi for 7 bands:

• 3 elements on 40 m
• simple dipole on 30 m
• 3 elements on 20 m
• 3 elements on 17 m
• 3 elements on 15 m
• 3 elements on 12 m
• 4 elements on 10 m

This is how it looks like (I have recently added another 50-MHz 5-el Yagi at the top of the mast)

The antenna, weighing some 55 Kg, is supported by a 15 m. tower placed on the roof-top of a 5-storey city building. A tram that rides up & down the tower allows you to raise & lower the antenna by simply turning a winch crank. Uncommonly, the tram does not wrap around the tower, but it instead slides on support guides fixed to one side of the tower. This design eliminates most problems with guy wires. That tower is produced in central Italy (contact I5JVA for details).

Though it clearly being a compromise, the antenna works acceptably on all bands. In particular, SWR is remarkably low; it never triggers the automatic power back-off circuit of my TS-950SDX, except above 14220 KHz.

This is the SWR response on 40 m.

and this is the 20 m. gain plot

(one step equals 14.4 dB)

Return to the I0JX home page