In April 2004 the station (and I along with it; or perhaps the other way around) moved from an apartment in Arlington, Texas, to a house just north of Burleson, Texas (which is technically in Fort Worth, but if we want to get mail, we call it "Burleson": the city limit is about a mile south of the QTH). Real antennas went up for the first time, and the shack expanded from a desk in the corner of the bedroom (with many other things) to, well, that same desk, but in its own room. Pictures of the current QTH are coming sometime.

While I'm assembling "Studio A" at the new QTH, my HF operating is from the north Arlington shack of WA5NJG. If we've QSOd and my signal was not quite on frequency and drifted a lot, this is why.

Heathkit SB-401 HF CW/SSB Transmitter. I figured that if Heath had a highly-stable and predictable transmitter/receiver design at six meters (the SB-110, below), then certainly it should be rock-stable at half or less the frequency. Seems to be the case, though this particular transmitter needs a little bit of work done to it before it's ready for prime time, namely the SBA-401-1 crystal accessory kit, a new microphone jack (easy), and a new dial drive gizmo. It's expected to soon be mated with a SB-301 receiver, since among other things, the oscillators can be "locked" together to transmit and receive on the same frequency (what a strange notion!).

Heathkit SB-110 6M CW/SSB Transceiver. This is a really fine radio, and for tubes operating at 50 Mc, it's surprisingly stable. The warm-up period appears to be instantaneous. With this radio I operated the June VHF contest, and worked several Es openings throughout the states with a modest antenna, a Moxon at 15 feet, all set up portable at the WA5NJG location. The radio also operated Field Day 2004 with the Arlington Radio Club, where we caught an opening into Connecticut and the midwest. On a humorous note, the club had a second VHF transmitter, a Kenwood TS-something-fancy, with a 5el at 25 feet with a rotor, which was able to work the opening across the county (that's right, the county) to work the Lockheed Martin club.

Hammarlund HQ-110 HF AM/CW/SSB Receiver. I bought this recently from Tom WQ5J, partly because it receives the 6M band (and Hammarlund made a 2M converter for it too, which I might be able to add on later). It works very well up to 15M; on 10M and 6M things are not quite right, the result of a microphonic BFO tube. In the overall station plan, this receiver is likely to be the 6 meter AM receiver, since it's the only one I have that receives six, and the microphonic BFO is unimportant for AM, where it's not on.

Heathkit "Seneca" (VHF-1) 6M/2M AM/CW Transmitter. I acquired this a little while back, and the build quality is quite impressive. The original builder even engraved his name and location on the rear apron of the chassis. It tunes up very well on 6M (not so well and not so much power on 2, as is to be expected). I hope to add this transmitter and a proper microphone and an antenna to the working station very soon. Even though it's AM, it's 120 watts input, so that's still a few watts of talk-power.

Heathkit "Pawnee" (HW-20) 2M AM/CW Portable Transceiver. I don't have a 2M horizontal antenna in the air, so this radio also lives at WA5NJG temporarily. It tunes up fairly well (though only 8 watts AM or 10 watts CW) and seems to hear well too.

National NC-2-40D General Coverage Receiver. Someone gave it to my dad twenty or so years ago, and until a few years ago it sat on the garage keeping dust off the floor. Around 1995 I started tinkering with the idea of fixing it up, but never got far. It had a lot of rust on the cabinet and just a general mess. I cleaned some of it, and got the missing tubes, but for the most part it sat until 2001. The project started again, and so I removed the cabinet and repaired the S-meter. The tuning dial was stuck, and I couldn't quite figure out why. I got the power transformer off (I forget why), and then it sat another two years, with its cabinet off, making a neat centerpiece for the living room. I started working on it again in early 2003 and was determined to not let it sit unfixed. I put all the electrical parts back on it, made it mechanically work, and then borrowed a variac from Gene WB5CTQ. I turned it on and warmed it up, and everything lit up. It did have some bad tubes, however: a 5Y3 rectifier that flashed over purple but did not rectify (this tube made me warm the radio up twice on the variac), and a 6SK7 r.f. amplifier (this one went out while I was receiving a SSB QSO in the vicinity of 7245 kc around 2100Z 15 Feb 2003). The 5Y3 was replaced with a known-good 5U4 I had on hand. The 6SK7 still requires replacement.
Latest News: I replaced the SK7 and something else, and assembled a speaker; and it does receive. The present problem lies in the tuning: there is a poor contact in the bandswitch which unpredictably detunes the tuned circuits; so the dial is up to several hundred kc's off one way or the other. This of course renders it not very useful for the station. This is the primary reason I decided to buy the Hammarlund receiver.

Yaesu FT-8000R 2M/436Mc FM Mobile Transceiver. The obligatory FM radio...

Yaesu VX-7R. The obligatory FM handie-talkie...

Six Meter Stressed Moxon. On loan from WB5CTQ, this antenna works very well for its volume, and it collapses very compactly and easily. This will eventually be replaced by, most likely, a 3el 6M beam. It's presently 25 feet in the air on Antenna Mast #2, along with the 4el 2M beam below. Antenna Mast #2 is fitted with a genuine Armstrong rotor without a remote interface.

ARX-270 "Ringo" 2M/436Mc Vertical Antenna. This antenna came by way of Gene WB5CTQ and spent a few months lying around in the apartment waiting for a chance to be used. At the new QTH, it lives atop 20 feet of light-duty antenna mast (the TV antenna type) with 50 feet of LMR-400 feeder.

42 Foot Inverted Vee. A homebrew antenna, the design for this one came from L. Cebik W4RNL. It's his answer to the question If I could have only one wire, what would it be? (the 44-foot doublet), modified into an inverted vee. It's an Extended Double Zepp on 10M, and something else on the other bands, and of course requires a transmatch to present a reasonable s.w.r. to the transmitter. Since I have no HF transmitter, mismatches of that sort are of no consequence, and thus I run it via 52-ohm coax to the HQ-110's antenna terminals. The transmitting version will be made with 450-ohm ladderline feeder to the transmatch, sometime later.

Four-Element Two Meter Beam. This antenna also came from Gene WB5CTQ. It works well, though I haven't tested it a lot. It resides 20 feet above ground on Antenna Mast #2, though I forgot to connect a feedline before I raised the mast. It will be used for 2M AM (with the HW-20) in the future.

Two Meter Sleeve Dipole. I built this antenna several years ago out of a scrap piece of coax. I think it's a bit too short. I need to see what it actually does.
Latest News: This was recently turned into a short coax jumper, a change for the better.

Television Reception Antenna. This is built very unscientifically. I started with a sleeve dipole cut for 54 Mc (but I did not account for velocity factor, so it's probably 5% long). I then tuned the television around and found the station that received worst, and cut a half wave parasitic element for its lowest frequency and taped that to the antenna. I repeated the process of tuning around and cutting parastitic elements. The finished product has, I think, five parasitic elements all taped to the PVC tube that houses the driven element. I soldered a SO-239 to the driven element and gaff taped that to one end of the PVC tube. It's built very unscientifically, and I do want to replace it with an antenna design which is a bit more scientific. This antenna, however, does not perform too terribly poorly on all the frequencies that have local transmitters. It would indeed work better if I got it off the ground and in the air about eight feet. Have any ideas? This turned into a 6M-ish sleeve dipole when we moved, and it worked well enough on that one occasion I needed to use it. I don't remember exactly where it is now, but I think it's on the floor somewhere, under stuff.

Pictures From The Old QTH.

Window As A Slot Antenna: The apartment had metal in the walls (expanded steel for stucco/plaster exterior), so an indoor transmitting antenna was out of the question. This evolved out of necessity, and it turned out to work very well (all things considered). It was fed with 52-ohm coax through a delta match ten and a half inches on a side; a tuning shunt was added about a quarter from the end to move the resonance from about 130 Mc to right at 146 or 147 Mc. This slot is vertically polarized. Mobile antenna farm is on the car through the window, a 6M Hamstick on top, and a 2M 5/8 / 436Mc collinear on the trunk lip.

ARX-270 Ringo On A Microphone Stand: Doesn't work well inside a metal box = apartment. This antenna currently resides at the new QTH atop 20 feet of Antenna Mast No. 1, where I am consistently impressed with its performance. 2M beam is seen in the picture too, looking on.

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