This is the current configuration of the station at K9ES. It has been designed for single op andmulti single contesting . This station has been active since October 2002. Changes are made to improve the contesting efficiency. |
View
shows the main operating position with the ICOM-756 Pro2 and power supply.
To the right is the Astron 12V 25A power supply and speaker for 2M FM.
2M FM and 2M packet are right of power supply. GMT and local clocks
are under radio, and atomic clock is above radio. Also a large cork
bulletin board keeps important notes, and information. The 15"
monitor runs Writelog.
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This
is a straight on view of the station. On the left of the IC-756 is the
rotor control and MFJ Contest Keyer. Above this area is the Tentec Centurion
amplifier. Below the rotor controls is the antenna switching control,
and the Mirage Wattmeter. This wattmeter monitors reflected power. The
Linear shows peak output power. On the table is the Bencher paddle,
voice message control, and computer keyboard.
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The
antenna switch is a simple control that allows the operator to access
any of the many antennas easily. The Ameritron RCS-10 controls a box
located on the inside of my antenna access panel. This selects between
the 80 foot tower antennas, the TH6DXX, the D3W WARC Dipole, the 80M
sloping dipole, and the 160M inverted L. When the Ameritron selects
the 80 foot antenna, the lower box is activated. This box selects either
the 2 element 40M beam (at 95 ft), the 5 element 10M beam (at 86 ft),
the 4 element 15M beam (at 81 ft) and the 4 element 20M beam (at 81
feet, interlaced with the 15M beam). With the power off, or the Ameritron
set to 1, the shack feeds a 50 ohm load.
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The
voice keyer remote control is connected to the IC-756 Pro 2 microphone
jack. The switches activate one of four pre-programmed messages. The
design for this is found in the user manual of the IC-756 Pro2. It is
a highly shielded resistor network, where each switch produces a unique
resistance. This box was fabricated using radio shack parts.
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This view is a close-up of the Astron 25 Amp switching power supply, the speaker for the 2-M FM radio, and the 2 meter radios. The top radio is a Radio Shack HTX-242, connected to a J-Pole at 100 feet. The bottom radio is an Icom IC-28 for Packet Radio. I keep it on 145.95 MHz, connected to the KC4HW Packet Cluster. | This view is a close-up of the antenna panel. This grounded stainless steel panel has all outside antennas entering the shack via lightning arrestors. The RCS-10 relay box is shown in the upper right. The terminal blocks are for the remote tower relay box, the rotors on both towers. The feedthru insulator is for the 160 Inverted L. It is matched to 50 ohms. |