My station:

An 80/40/20/15/10 M band homebrew transceiver (9 MHz filter), which produces a few watts output, sufficient (just) to drive a 2 x 6KD6 sweep tube amplifier to maybe 100 plus watts PEP output (never accurately measured). This gear still works, although being around 30 years old it is a bit temperamental!. It was constructed when most commercial gear was still all-valve. The transceiver uses some germanium transistors, an IC (CA3028A), some FET’s and a broadband PA using 40290 (like 2N3866) transistors in the output stage. A separate TTL frequency counter with internal LO/BFO mixer displays the transceiver frequency. Yep, it’s a real oddity!

The linear amplifier uses a massive old switch to switch the power supply from 600 volts for tune-up to 900 volts for operating. 600 volts is obtained from a 230/230v isolation transformer by voltage-doubling, switched to tripling for 900 volts. Lots of old 100 μF metal can electrolytic capacitors in there, still surviving!

I also use a separate general coverage receiver constructed in the mid-1970’s. This uses a 43-72 MHz PLL 1^st LO (manually locked to a 1MHz reference) and the 1^st I.F. tunes 42-43 MHz. 2^nd I.F. is 10.7 MHz (15KHz Xtal filter) and 3^rd I.F. 455 KHz (2.2 kHz BW mechanical filter). It has passband tuning provided by a 10,240 to 10250 Khz variable third LO which is mixed with 10.700 MHz to generate a 460 to 450 KHz BFO. The 10.7 Mhz injected to this mixer is derived from a 10.0 MHz master crystal oscillator by multiplying 10 MHz x 3 = 30 MHz, and also dividing it to 5 Mhz, mixing 30 + 5 = 35 MHz, dividing 35 MHz by 5 to get 700 Khz and mixing with 10 MHz to get 10.700 MHz. Oh yes, and the 35 MHz is also mixed with a Vackar VFO tuning 2.7 to 3.7 MHz to generate the 2^nd LO 31.3 to 32.3 MHz! Lots of shielding and filtering was necessary! Confused? So was I – I had to check those frequencies to remind myself before writing this paragraph!

My present antenna is a parallel wire multiband inverted vee dipole for 40 thru 10 m bands and a Multee for 80m (which does not work well). I have used better antennas in the past and I like a vertical quarter wave with an elevated counterpoise, also the good old G5RV for which I now don’t have the space. Read G6XN’s book (RSGB) about counterpoises!