Tour of shack at Amateur Radio station WS6l, Roseville, CA...

My shack is located on the ground floor of our house, in a den off the living room, with a window to our RV pad, on the south side of the house. When we purchased the house, I made a deal with my wife that the den was to be my private room, to be used as a computer and radio room, and its been that way ever since. I'm fortunate that I have a space of my own, that I don't have to share with the rest of the family. Also, it has a very effective door that works two ways: My XYL doesn't have to hear my CW or my CQ calls, or the sweet musical sounds of PSK31, and I don't have to hear her daily soap operas.

Photo: WS6L, doing what he does best, relaxing between contacts. Actually, it's 0815 on a Thursday morning, and I'm in the middle of a weekly schedule with my brother, N6TMR, on 3903 KHz. The ship pictured in the photo is the U.S.S. Roark, FF-1058, which is the last ship that I served on, back in my Navy days.

The coax enters the shack through the window. It's a sliding, double-pained window, and I constructed a spacer to allow the coax in, and to keep the weather and the insects outside. By a bit of cleaver manipulating, I was even able to keep the outside sun screen mounted on the window, which is a good idea, as the window faces south, and it can get extremely hot during the typical summer months in Roseville, CA.

Both high frequency antennas are fed into a MFJ 949-D antenna tuner, and switched between radios using a 2-position Daiwa coax switch. Both antennas can be tuned or bypassed through the antenna tuner. Obviously, the VHF/UHF antenna is fed directly to the rig.

My VHF/UHF station consists of a Yaesu FT-7800R, dual band rig. Although it's a low-end dual bander, it does everything that I need it to do, as about all I do is check into local nets, and scan some of the local action. If you've read the antenna section about the WS6L station, you'll remember that I have a Comet dual band antenna mounted on the roof, and I can work stations for miles around.

The true love of my life is high frequency, and currently my shack sports two rigs: A venerable Kenwood TS-430S and a Yaesu FT-817ND. The Kenwood has many miles on it, as I've owned it since I was first licensed, back in 1984. It still works just fine, and from the reports I get, the audio is good, as I get compliments on my audio. There are a couple of issues with the rig, a) It won't transmit on 12 or 10 meters b) It won't transmit CW. I've put it on the bench several times, trying to fix these problems, but there's no hope for it, as the problems are microprocessor issues. Trying to arrange a brain transplant for a 25 year old rig borders between difficult to impossible, so I just live with it's limitations and use the Yaesu when I'm in the mood to work CW, which is much of the time.

The FT-817ND is a recent addition to the shack, as I've only had it since August, 2009, and I'm still getting used to it. It was love at first sight, and the romance is still blossoming, as just like my wife, I find something new to love about it every day. I have only three gripes with the Yaesu: a) The battery door - everybody gripes about this poorly-engineer monster b) Lack of built-in antenna tuner c) VHF receive coverage stops at 154 MHz... this is supposed to be an Emcomm rig? Other than those three gripes, I love the rig, and it's attributes more than make up for it's shortcomings.

Photo: My XYL's cat, Malachai poses on my chair, and ponders how to assistt me in the quest of a new country for DXCC QRP! Check out my ever-present coffee cup, which gets me through life, and pile-ups.

The FT-817D wears multiple hats, as it lives in the shack, yet when I'm out exploring or four wheeling, the rig is in my truck, it does patio duty during warm weather, and many times it accompanies me on my daily walk. It is also connected to the computer, as it's the rig that I use for PSK31. Really, when it comes down to it, I use the FT-817ND for practically everything, including casual shortwave listening. You could say there's a tremendous generation gap between my rigs, as the Yaesu is much smaller than the Kenwood, and has a much hotter receiver. But you're talking about a generation gap in humans, in electronics, it's a millennium gap... I mostly use the TS-430S to check into nets, and to keep a weekly schedule with my brother, N6TMR. Once in a while, when 5 watts just won't cut it, I'll use the TS-430S to bag a new one, such as I did the other day when I tried working KH2L using the QRP rig, gave up, switched over to the TS-430S, and got him on the first try, and received a 59 signal report for my efforts.

All three rigs are powered by an Astron SS-30M power supply. If the power goes out, I have a deep cycle battery as a backup, and several gel cells that I use for portable use, that are charged by solar panels. The "green team" would love my station.

Photo: My shack is compact, functional, and neatly arranged. Between the computer and the radio gear, I spend many enjoyable hours at this desk every day. Check out that fine looking website on the computer screen!

PSK31 is provided by a Tigertronics SignaLink USB, powered by DigiPan software, fed into a mongrel XP machine. I say mongrel, as the computer is a collection of parts that started out about 10 years ago as a custom-made machine, but it's been upgraded, changed, so now it barely recognizes the machine that it began life as. I think the only original components are the case, the power supply, and a sorry 1.44 Mb floppy drive that hasn't been used in years. The only thing I use this bastard computer for is PSK31, logging, and casual Internet surfing. All website work, Excel and Word work, and practically everything else is done on my Vista notebook, which soon will be sporting Windows 7 as its operating system.

In the closet, and currently not in use, are a couple of MFJ QRP rigs, a couple of old Heathkit rigs in various stages of disrepair, and a couple of homebrew rigs that I'm still trying to bring to life. Maybe I'll give them to my grandchildren some day...

That concludes the nickel tour of WS6L's shack. Y'all come back, ya hear...?

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