Second project: Microphone Boom

I had this idea last week and it turned out to be quite quick and easy. I went Bunnings and bought an angle poise desk lamp and then went to Dick Smith and bought a 600ohm vocal microphone. First step was to remove the lamp components and fit a microphone clip. Secondly, drill a suitable hole in the shelf to seat the stand and thats it. $50 in components and 10 minutes adapting and fitting and i have a quality desk microphone and boom that takes up almost no space and can be extended to suit the operator.

The first of 2 Projects this week

I haven't had a lot of free time this week, but still time enough to get 2 projects done. The first was a simple shelf to give me more access to an increasingly cluttered station.

Cross Member For Mast (a Sunday arvo project)

It was a glorious Sunday afternoon so i decided it was time to add a cross member to one of my masts in order free up another. Nothing technical here, just some mast brackets and a length of light pipe cut to a suitable length. Now i have the weather station and the Discone perched on the spar and a spare mast for my next project.

New Antenna Aquisition

      I must have been a very good boy this year because Santa has ordered me a brand spanking new  OCF/Windom Dipole! These antennas are the perfect multiband application for HF, (provided you have the necessary 132 ft/44m room) covering the 80m to 6m bands. It can be set up in a sloper configuration or as an inverted V, but i will stick with the bog standard flat top to start off with.
     Now all i have to do is figure out where to string it up. These things generally take upwards of  2 weeks to get here from the "states", so i have plenty of time to come up with a plan of attack.

V8's at Winton 18/11/12

    I love when the V8 supercars come to Winton raceway. Although it's 20+ Kms away, it's LOS (line of sight) so i just pop all the team radio and race control frequencies into the scanner and i have great coverage of the races and incidents.

Pre-Selector for SWL

    Here is a "homebrew" antenna tuner i made as a weekend project. The design is by brian Carling and was published in SWL Echo, December 1991.

My Desk

This is my desk and the program being used is MultiPSK, an invaluable tool for the radio hobbyist.