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I have another shack update to share!
With the utility room finished up (I just wrote about that recently), the cat boxes are moved, and I was able to do my final prep before I start to hang drywall in the shack and rec room.
With the utility room finished up (I just wrote about that recently), the cat boxes are moved, and I was able to do my final prep before I start to hang drywall in the shack and rec room.
For me, there were 2 things left that I wanted to do before hanging the drywall. The first was to add insulation to the stud bays. In the process of doing that I also boxed out the location where I will be attaching a metal panel that will serve 2 purposes:
- It will give me access to the end of the conduit I put across the rec room
- It will serve as a bulkhead of sorts. The coax I pulled across the rec room will terminate in bulkhead connectors here, and then as I finish the operating position, I'll make my connections here to get signal to the outdoors.
The second thing on my list was to get the main power feed sheathed in conduit where it would be exposed, and connected to the new sub-panel in the shack. With that done, I was able to connect a temporary circuit to have a couple lights and a receptacle. Now I can see while I work, without needing to drag extension cords across the other parts of the basement!
Why the insulation you ask? It's actually a pretty basic answer - sound dampening. Now, there is a difference between sound-proofing, and sound dampening, and I think sometimes people get confused about what types of products do what function. Any porous material, like insulation, or those foam egg crate panels you can hang on walls (which I plan on doing in some areas!), the corner bass traps that you can find online, will do a fine job of sound dampening. That basically means they can help improve the acoustics of a room by helping to prevent reflections, echos, etc. They WONT sound-proof your room. Outright sound-proofing is a different beast, that as hams, we probably don't need to worry about. The best way to really get sound-proofing is mass - i.e. thick concrete walls.
For me, sound-proofing is already about as good as I can expect it because my room happens to be a concrete cube- I just wanted to fill the hollow, framed, walls with something so that my small room doesn't have weird echos as I talk on the radio, and do my conference and video calls for work!
What do you think?
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