- Pair of Kenwood TS-930S HF Transceivers
- Cascaded Kenwood 500 Hz CW filters in one (right)
- Cascaded Inrad 400 Hz CW and 2.1 kHz SSB filters in the other (left)
- Inrad roofing filter in one (left)
- Both have PIEXX microprocessor upgrade
- Yaesu FT-840 with Inrad 500 Hz CW filter for mobile/portable use
- IBM Pentium 166 MHz PC running Windows 95 for logging
- Dual-CPU Pentium III 500 MHz running Xubuntu GNU/Linux and Windows XP for everything else
- W3NQN filters for 160, 80, 40, and 20 meters.
- Antennas:
- 20-meter ground plane, feetpoint at 10 feet
- 20-meter dipole at 35 feet (E/W)
- 40-meter dipole at 40 feet (E/W)
- 80-meter dipole at 45 feet (NNW/SSE)
- 160-meter 45-ft top-loaded vertical (short 80-meter feedline and feed against ground)
Some folks may be curious why I'm using 25-year-old radios. For one thing, they're dirt cheap. I have around $1200 (total) invested in the two Kenwoods, including repairs and upgrades that I've made to them. That's about the going price of one used FT-1000MP with no filters. Despite having some phase noise and a 6 kHz-wide 1st IF, they have good audio on phone, they're awesome on CW, and, I can repair them myself without a lot of fancy equipment.
gear in storageWhen I do finally get out of school and buy a house, I have amassed some hardware to install:
- Two KLM KT-34XA tribanders (one needs capacitor upgrade, new plastic; other in good shape, tnx N8BR and AD8P)
- Hy-Gain 402BA 2-el 40-meter yagi (replace linear loading with hi-Q coils)
- Hy-Gain Tailtwister rotator
- Various pieces and parts of Rohn 25G (always looking for more, especially 45/55G and assy)
- A few rolls of RG-213 and hardline
Long term, I hope to stack the XA's on about 100 feet of Rohn 45 or 55G. The lower antenna will rotate on a swinging gate. I'd like to put the upper antenna on a TIC ring so that it's independent of the 40 meter beam. I'll hang something, either a 4-square or W8AV triangle for 80.
I plan to continue using the TS-930's until they get hit by lightning or I find myself with too much money to burn. As far amplifiers, I've promised myself that I won't buy one until I have a nice antenna array. Then, and only then, it will be a high-quality legal-limit amp like an Alpha or big Ameritron, possibly homebrew.