Well, November is nearly in the bag!  In the spirit of thanksgiving, I've been most thankful for the health of my 3 little ones, my wife, and the rest of my family.  In addition, we are privileged enough that I really have to be thankful for everything - I've got no room to complain about anything, when considering the alternatives!

     Among my privileges, are the fact that I get to go to work every day, and earn enough that with some patience, time, savings, and my own labor, I can keep plugging away on building my new ham shack.  The room itself is done, so now I've been shifting gears towards the radio infrastructure.  I left myself a big service area behind the operating position, so that's one of the things I have worked on in the last couple weeks.  When I last left you the space back there looked pretty much like this:

     Since then, I've put insulation in the wall (to keep it from sounding like a drum when I thump on my desk) and attached plywood to the backside.  All the room electrical is in the wall, and all the shack electric will be done surface-mount in conduit, to accommodate changes updates etc. as the radio part of the shack takes shape and changes in the future.

     In case you are curious, the wires coming through the wall in the third picture are some temporary cords for things that are on the shelf in the ham shack - the first is a light, and the second is the small coax for a cellular antenna - my shack is basically a concrete bunker, so I had to put in an external antenna and a little booster-amplifier to bring cell signal down into the space.
     Another thing worth pointing out - in the first picture above you might notice the large junction box.  Inside that box is all of the AC circuits that will eventually be for shack stuff, coming from the breaker panel above it.  This way, as I add equipment, I can run conduit from this box, to wherever I need it, to get the circuits where they need to go.

     More recently, I've been working on getting my computer monitors for the operating position mounted, but in the interest of time, I'll save that update for another post.  Feel free to check out my twitter and instagram if you want to see some sneak peaks of that!

     Shhhhh....don't tell, but there's something I'm having more fun doing than radio....hanging out with my family and our new baby!

     The good news is, I still really like ham radio, and have kept plugging away at my shack project, work on the POTA database, and getting on the air,  in little bits and pieces as I have time.  The shack stuff has mostly been details, the most visible of which is the "splashguard" boards around the desk.  

As I was measuring, cutting, and test fitting those boards, I did find a spot in the wall that has a bit of a bulge, which meant I had to make one of my otherwise solid boards, "bendy":

Luckily it turned out well, and things look a lot cleaner, and more "finished" now that they are in place.  In classic "Where's Waldo" style, look for the following things in the picture below, that are the "details" I've been working on.

• "Splashguards" installed
• Additional sound-deadening installed
• Corner trim
• Callsign Plaque made by W8ZST
• UTC clock installed
• FCC License displayed, in super fancy fashion
• Tension wire stretched near the ceiling, behind the operating position
  • I work from home, so when I'm on video calls I can pull curtains across behind myself to "hide" the rest of the room when I'm on display :-)

     The other fun detail was some little tid-bits I ordered for my giant map.  I wanted to be able to "pin" states, provinces, and countries as I contacted them, but the map is actually hanging using poster clip rails.  I ordered some map magnets, and a whole bunch of super tiny magnets, so that I could just put one of the tiny magnets behind the map, the map magnet in front, and then slide them into position.

If you want to do something similar, most of this stuff can be grabbed from Amazon:

• Map Magnets
• Tiny Magnets
• Giant Map​

Hello there! Due to the birth of our newest future operator, I’ve only had time for some minor “construction” related progress in the new shack, but I did manage one major item - moving out of the master bedroom closet and into my new space!

While the space is now able to be occupied, the things left to do are all the radio“ish” things, like installing gear, running coax, mounting antenna’s etc. the goal was to get to this point before the baby was born, so that I could at least move my home office to a quieter area of the house, so that I wouldn’t disturb the baby, and vice-versa during my at-home workday. I’m sure my progress will be slower now that we have a tiny one in the house, but at least when I do get to plug away at things, it will be the “fun stuff” related to the radios.

​Here’s where I’m at now:

     I just recently finished putting down about 830 square feet of flooring!  The largest portion of this was in what will be our new rec room, but a small portion of it was the very important bit - the ham shack!

     For the floor, we wanted something simple and quick, that also looked pretty decent when it was done, so Pergo to the rescue!  We used their Outlast + series, and were very specific to follow their recommendations for the type of vapor barrier for our application, since this is a basement and I don't want any trouble :-)

     With the floor in place, and the desktop partly built, the room is really starting to look like a ham shack...

     Oh, and for anyone who hasn't been reading along for the last few months, and is wondering what that hole in the wall is for.....

     The recessed fridge also has a secret purpose.  I can pull the fridge out, go through the hole, and there is an empty space large enough for me to stand in.  That space is where the conduit runs up to the attic start, so I can go in here to work and pull cables up and down in the future.  I've been trying to plan ahead during this whole thing :-)

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     I'd like to share another bit of my shack project with you - the desk for my operating position.  For reference, here's the space before I started building the desk:

     The look I'm ultimately, going for is more on the rustic side - think "old English pub turned into a radio studio" :-)  Anyway, for a desktop to match that look I waffled around with ideas, but ultimately wanted something pretty beefy - like maybe butcher block or old thick reclaimed boards.  Ready-made butcher block would have been pricey, and I didn't see any old torn-down barns in my area in the last few weeks, so I decided to make something.  Of all the potential materials, I ended up just getting a bunch of 2x6 boards.  

This type of lumber is often pretty green (i.e. not fully cured) so it can have a tendency to twist funny as it dries.  Since I'm going for rustic, I don't mind if goes slightly askew while it dries, but to try to minimize it, I screwed some steel angle onto the bottom, to keep things relatively straight while the glue set, and I did the sanding etc. to prep the top.

I'm pretty pleased with how the top came out after sanding.  Once it's stained and sealed I think it will give me just the look I'm after.

     Next, I needed a frame to mount the desk on!  Luckily, I though ahead and put lumber in the walls where this was going to mount, so I have some very strong anchoring in the wall.  For the frame I went with 1x3 pine.  With the frame in place you can really start to see how the operating desk will kind of flow around the corners, and blend in with what will be the workbench area, to the right.

One final note - most ham shacks are probably going to want deeper desktops, but in my case, the equipment will be recessed in the wall, accessible from the rear by the doorway to the left.  For this reason I only wanted my desktop wide enough that when I rest my arms on it, my finger tips just hit the wall (where the buttons will be!)  For me and the way I sit, that worked out to be about 20."

Bye for now!

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