CURRENT SHACK

My current shack looks as follows:

I operate the following Bands and Modes:

For HF SSB (20/15/10) I primarily use the Kenwood TS870S with the Kenwood PS30 Power Supply and SP-180 external speaker. The old trustworthy Hansen FS-500H is used to measure the SWR and Power of this rig. I use the Kenwood TL922 linear Amplifier to provide me with 400 Watts of output power (Legal Limit in South Africa). The current power output on HF is thus 400W PEP into a Hy-Gain TH3JR 3 element Tri-bander beam for 20/15/10M. See my Antenna page for more information. When operating CW I use a Bencher Key - Pure Bliss!
For the 6 Meter band I operate both FM and SSB using the Kenwood TS570S HF/6M transceiver with the Kenwood SP23 external speaker. A Revex W520 SWR/Watt meter is used to do the necessary measurements. This transceiver is powered by the Kenwood PS50 power supply.
I use the ICOM IC820H 2M/70CM transceiver for SSB and Satellite Communication. Together with the Tokyo HL160V (2M) and Corona HP120UDX I get almost 200W on 2M and more than 120W output on 70cms. The rig is powered by a ICOM PS85 power supply unit and the linears by a Kenwood PS50 power supply. The SWR and power measurements are made by the Diamond SX-200 and SX-400 SWR/Power meters. I also use the Yaesu FT847 All Mode Transceiver fro VHF/UHF work.
My Echolink station consists of the following:
  • Rigblaster Plus
  • Kenwood TM211E 2M FM Radio (25 Watts Output)
  • 10 Element 2M Maspro Antenna @ 5 Meters beaming South-East
  • Intel Pentium II 350Mhz Computer
  • Echolink Software
  • ADSL Internet connection. provided by Telkom SA
My packet station is interfaced by a Kantronics KAM Plus TNC. The 2M radio I am using is the Kenwood TR7730 2M FM transceiver with the Diamond SX-200 SWR/Power Meter.

The computer I am using using is an Intel Pentium III 800MHz computer with a 30Gb Hard Drive, 384Mb of RAM and a 17" LCD monitor by Dell.This computer is mainly used for development. I also have a Intel Pentium II 350Mhz computer with which  I  experiment with ILink (EchoLink) SSTV, Packet and other digital modes. I am running a network at home with all my PC's connected. I use a seperate PC as a server to accomodate file sharing, sharing of my log database. I run an ADSL internet connection at home (As long as I can still afford it!).