Tech here ranges from tubes (see the Scott AM / FM unit up there? I love that thing...) to a modern transceiver to bleeding edge SDR technology. Outside, there is an Optibeam OBW10-5 five band beam, a Pixel Pro RF1B loop, a 10-15-20-40 inverted vee, and a 80-40 vertical. Come spring, I want to add an 80 meter inverted vee... the vertical's angle of radiation is low, which is great for DX and very local, but not so good for mid-range, by which I mean within the US, communications. A vee should solve that.

On 20 meters and above, I use the beam almost exclusively — I'm very pleased with it. I've made contacts all over the world on it; from Antarctica to the north pole, all over europe, into africa and south america, Russia, the middle east — just a great beam. On 40 and 80, I receive using the loop, which allows me to null out local noise, and transmit using the vertical.

For CB, I just have a whip mounted up high. It's more for emergency use than anything else, not a lot of local activity these days.

On VHF and UHF, I use old AEA Isopoles — truly excellent antennas, possibly the best RF product they ever sold. For the scanner and my broadband SDR, I use a discone, 25 MHz to about 1.5 GHz.

The computer (under the desk there) is an 8 core, 3 GHz Mac Pro that I picked up off of EBay for a song. It's running SdrDx.

We're right at the peak of the current sunspot cycle, and while it's not as "hot" as previous cycles, still, radio is more active than it's been in a decade, so lots of fun to be had right now. I can't say I look forward to the descent into the valley of the cycle, but I try not to think about it too much. Eleven years is a long time, and who knows what the next cycle will be like. The predictions for this one certainly weren't very close!

#swl #hamradio

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