If you got to this post by doing a Google search for the title, and you were looking for a song by the same name - shame on you for listening to terrible music :-)  

     Hello all!  There are no exciting pictures to share yet, but my shack project has moved one step further along - last week I reached out to 3 folks to come and have a look at the drywall I hung to give their estimates on finishing it for me - 2 called back, and the first stopped by this morning to check things out.

    The good news is, he told me that for not being a drywall hanger, I didn't do to bad - that was good news to me, because it was the first time I ever hung drywall!  Luckily, he's another ham too, so when giving him directions I was able to give him my address, and let him know to just look for the car in the driveway with all the antenna's on it!  The second person will be stopping by later this week, so I'm hoping that by early next week I'll have nailed down who/when, and will be able to start planning the next phases of the project - paint, putting down the floor, and building out the operating position!

     As a final note, don't forget that this weekend is the "Support Your Parks Summer 2018" POTA event, where myself and K0ATZ have sponsored a pair of plaques that are up for grabs - hope to hear you on the air!

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     Since I've been slowly building my ham shack, my temporary location for radio operations continues to be the master bedroom closet.  For HF this isn't too bad, because it is only a short distance to the feed-point of the long-wire antenna I'm temporarily using for those bands (I talked about putting up my current version last fall.)  For VHF/UHF however, I've been limited to this arrangement:

    While this has worked fine for the local repeater, it limits me because:

• Indoor antennas for VHF and UHF are almost always poor performers
• Its only like 2 feet from my head, so I'm rather restricted on the power I can run through it.

     Ultimately, the plan was to put my VHF and UHF antenna's on a mast on the roof, because I'm fortunate enough to live right near the crest of a small hill, in a relatively flat area, which means I don't have to get very high to be clear of obstructions for quite a few miles in all directions - in fact, I only need to get a few feet above my own roof to clear my own trees!  

A while back I decided to just get the stuff ordered to put the mast up, figuring that I can feed the coax into my temporary shack while I continue work on the permanent one in the basement.  With that though, I was off to the roof!

Per the directions, I started by holding the top bracket in place at the peak of the eve, and using a torpedo level to make sure it was straight.  After marking the holes, and pre-drilling, I installed the bracket (with just a dab of silicone to seal things up!).

Putting this bracket on first, allows you to assemble the bottom bracket, attach it to the mast, and then position the bottom bracket by sliding the mast up through the top bracket and tightening it down.  This basically "hangs" the bottom bracket from the mast and top bracket, so that you can freely position, level, and then screw the bottom bracket fast.  Easy!

After tightening everything down, I have a mast in place!  Like many other hams, time is limited, so it will probably be a couple weeks before I order an antenna and get it mounted (or even just temporarily mount the thing that I'm using inside.)   I think I'm going to claim that the delay is on purpose - this way if any neighbors complain about interference, I can shoot them down - "There's not even an antenna on it yet!"
     That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

     Howdy all!  I just have another short update for everyone this week, related to the progress on my primary project - the home ham shack.  The shack and the main "rec room" part of the basement are part of the same project, so the last couple weeks have been tied up with drywall and related work in the main part of the basement, which is mostly not ham radio related (which is why I haven't bored all of you with those details...)  
     Before I started hanging the drywall in that room, I did share some of the work I did to run coax, rotor cable, conduit, etc. across the rec room.  I discussed that way back here, but if you recall, I basically ran a bunch of wire, coax, and conduit, and left the ends in a box against the outside wall.  The idea was to make it easy to do the penetration to the exterior when the time came.  Here's a couple pics as a reminder of that:

     Now, with drywall in place, the same spot looks like this:

     This gives me an easy access panel in the basement, so that when I get to the tower part of the project, I'll be able to put a matching box outside the house, drill through the exterior wall into the back of this box, pull my cable and wires through, and make my connections in the outside box, where all the connections to tower, ground, etc. will be.

     Just trying to plan ahead as I keep plugging along with this project!

     It was a busy week for me, but I still managed to make just a little bit of progress on the ham shack.  The larger portion of what I did was making more progress on the drywall in the area right outside of the ham shack.  I also put up some of the plywood ceiling in the service area, and added some bulb bases back there so that when I walk behind the equipment to work on things (and as I continue my current construction work!), I'll have plenty of light.

    For anyone who missed my previous updates, or anyone who is just inclined to like this type of thing, I also did a very short video tour of the space this week - enjoy!

Lastly, before I wrap up for this week, remember that the School Club Roundup is going on!  Just do me one favor - let's impress these kids and young adults with our very best operating skills - I heard a lot of people calling out of turn, individuals answering when schools called for other schools etc.  Many of these young people are getting their first introduction to ham radio, and if what they hear is adults that can't follow directions, we only have ourselves to blame if we can't get new recruits!

​Bye for now!

     I suppose that quite a few people think of the shot for Measles-Mumps-Rubella when they hear the term MMR.  In my case though, I'm talking about the other MMR - Mold & Moisture Resistant drywall.  We've never had any moisture issues in our basement since it's a walk-out with big windows and plenty of airflow, but just to be on the safe side, I decided to use MMR drywall for the walls of the ham shack.

     With the goal of getting started on the hanging, I borrowed a truck this past Saturday morning, went to the home center down the road, and picked up a load of purple drywall.  I rather like the color - maybe I should just leave it this way :-)

     Anyway - now that there are some actual walls in place, it's a little easier to see and explain how all this is coming together.  The shack is in the "middle" of the basement, so the corner of the room in the picture above has the pocket door that leads to the current family room. The operating position is actually behind me as I stood to take this photo.  You can also see in the above photo, the access to the end of the conduit I ran across the rec room.  The hole will get a metal panel over it, with bulkhead connectors for coax.  I'm planning on mounting the panel with threaded inserts so that it can be easily removed to access the conduit behind it.  Here's a closer shot:

     The cables you see are the other things I ran while the ceilings were still open -  4 sections of LMR-400, 2 cat6 cables, and a rotor control cable.  

     The operating position is also starting to take some shape, now that walls are in place:

     The desktop will land right at the division between the plywood and the drywall, so from the desk up, will be a nice, stained-wood surface that will have the equipment recessed in it, and the drywall will only be under the desk.  
     If you look closely, in the lower right hand side of the picture you can see an opening in the wall - this opening will serve 2 purposes:

• It gives me access to the bottom of the conduit that runs clean up to the attic of the house, to be used for coax, cables etc.
• It is perfectly sized for the mini-fridge that is currently in the storage room, so most of the time the "hole" will just look like a built in fridge - an important feature in the ham shack!

     If you're wondering about outlets in this space, don't worry!  Some of them will be built into the desktop and back-splash as I finish things out, but most of them will actually be in the "service area" because all you'll see from here is the faces of the equipment - all the wires and such will be accessed by walking behind the wall, through the door to left, that you can just see in the above picture.  It's right next to the door that leads out of the other side of the shack (which will give me quick access to the bathroom that will be across the hall - another important shack feature!)

     I gave myself about 4 feet of space to the back wall of the room (where most of the equipment will stick through), and about 2.5 feet feet along the side, so it should be a very comfortable way to access the back of the equipment!  I also installed a sub-panel for the ham-shack, so future power needs are well covered!

     Anyway, that's where the shack stands for now! This coming weekend will be spent doing more drywall, but that will be out in the hallway and rec-room, so I won't bore you with those details :-)

Thanks for stopping by!