Welcome to 2025! It’s been a longggg year. A lot has really happened and if I’m being honest, I’m actually looking forward to what 2025 will bring.

Upgrades around the shack

There isn’t too much to write home about the shack. I did manage a few upgrades, installations. The shack has been a painfully slow progress project for years now. I haven’t really covered the shack much on this site, I should start to include it here maybe.

Coax & Conduit

I finally got conduit installed to feed coax outside and a patch panel. Both of those things still require some work to get working correctly though. My home/shack layout is quite odd. My shack is on driveway side of my home and I have a large field on the opposite side. This kind of makes is difficult to get antennas into really the only real estate I have for them.

So up until now I’ve run, almost exclusively, a doublet oriented oddly. I knew that it was setup odd. I had set it up in a haste years ago when I moved into this home.

So with antenna planning, comes the need for feed line. Ladder line wasn’t going to cut it. My goal was to have a few antennas and ‘home run’ as much as possible. My primary reason is I like contesting. I should say I can’t afford contesting but I like contesting. With that said, I would like the opportunity to do multi operator contesting and having home runs to my antenna “field” was a requirement.

So, in the ground went the conduit and 4 runs of DX Engineering 400MAX. I used hard plastic conduit (something I do not recommend), drilled a hole into the wall of the shack, dropped the conduit into the ground, and ran it over to the fence line along the side of the house. At the opposite side of the fence, a DX Engineering Utility Enclosure Kits as a interconnect point. Antennas could connect here and then be routed through the conduit into the house. This gave a point in which to tie antenna projects in and make changes later on down the line without pulling new coax in the future and kept everything out of the weather.

Unfortunately, this was my first mis-step. I underestimated the required bend radius of the DXE coax and the box is simply not big enough to get my cables out of the conduit, around the box, into a lightening arrestor, and then out to an antenna without some crazy gymnastics. To be clear, the box is a perfectly fine box. It works well and is fairly well made, it’s just not big enough for my use case.

Coax switching

I wanted to do something a bit different for coax switching. At the time I had read several articles on automated coax switching but these seemed out of reach financially, or atleast more than I wanted to spend. My initial goal was to be able to switch filters in and out and send different radios to different antennas and/or filters.

I settled on a patch panel instead of any coax switches. I figured, at this point, a lot was likely to change with the station and I can hold off on any major expensive purchases of switching until the time was right. At the same time, my multi-operator or SO2R aspirations weren’t going to plan. Even today, in December of 2024, I still only operate single radio and one operator for any operations I do… So maybe multi-op just isn’t in my future?

So, as I said above, I settled on a patch panel. I went through the normal methods of creating a patch panel. Wood supports, metal working, etc.

Nothing really fit the room of my skill set. Then I remembered something I had stashed away. A few years ago an office clean out was taking place. The owners of the building were gutting an office building and everything had to go. As part of that, there were loads of wall mounted 10U (unit) networking cabinets. A friend, who works for the company, wanted some help getting them out and they were headed for the dumpster, so they ended up in my truck. At the time I didn’t really have a use for them but being in IT and being an all around nerd at heart, I figured why not grab them while I could. I had recently previously spec’d these out for a client install and these were expensive cabinets. So they sat for a few months.

My plan was to use server rack blank plates and drill out bulk head holes for a patch panel. I laid out what was the ‘temporary’ patch panel for my current station. Which is to say, I laid out as many bulk head connectors as I had on hand. I ended up with 4.

This plan was okay in theory, except for that pesky skill set problem. I hate drilling metal, I don’t really have the tools, or the skills and well, I didn’t line things up properly.

This brings me to my second list of things to fix. Just today I read an article on another ham radio blog I follow (although not as closely as I should) RF Patch Panel by Dave NK7Z. Dave had a similar idea with a MUCH better execution. I plan to redesign my patch panel and build it the way he did in the future.

The second issue with this is I had planned on using the rest of the panel to house filters and DC power injectors for my remote tuner but truthfully, this box is rather large and it’s taking up some useful space for cool things, like awards. I’m still contemplating getting a smaller rack mount and downsizing this quite a bit.

Ham Clock

I finally added a ham clock. Oh wait, … Okay, so I did add a Ham Clock, but I wanted to test something out and needed a raspberry pi….. Maybe next year

Awards

Speaking of awards! I finally got Worked All States. Mixed modes. Truthfully, this isn’t something I’d really been working towards. I wasn’t in a decent position to chase awards up until recent years. It was quite exciting to see I’d made it. I’m aiming for specific modes/bands now. I’d say a few of the hard to find ones were FT8 just out of necessity but that doesn’t feel like a true award.

Random bits

So the shack is somewhat coming along slowly. Being on the road regularly hasn’t given me a huge opportunity to be consistent, but to be honest, I’ve squandered the time home I’ve had doing other nonsense. Hopefully 2025 will see a return to some pride and determination. I find the biggest challenge I’m facing at the moment is space dedication. The shack is a 2 car (a small 2 car, don’t think my wife’s focus could get in here to be honest) garage converted into an office/shack. It’s partially finished currently but is fully insulated, heated/cooled, etc.

The biggest problem being that I don’t know what I want the room to be. Most days it’s an office, some days it’s a storage facility for my business equipment, an electronics shop, a TV repair shop (yes that’s happened!), a 3D printing ship, a photo printing shop, and even a ham shack sometimes. Hell, the only thing I don’t think I’ve done out here is sleep… it’s not a dog house yet.

So, configuring this room to be what I want or need it to be has been a challenge. I run a small business which carries with it a lot of equipment. Live video production gear is fairly large and takes up storage space. Recently, I’ve been able to shrink that down thanks to IP production technology (sending video over IP networks vs coaxial SDI cables with hardware switching) but that still leaves a lot to be organized and space to do each and everything.

Something to think about in 2025 for sure.

Upgrades around the shack (part 2?)

No this section has nothing to with any of the above. As I mentioned, I travel for work, quite a bit. So I have two shacks… A home shack and “a shack on my back” or more precisely, in my rolling luggage, backpack, car, shoulder…. You get the idea.

This year saw a lot of changes to my portable operating setup. I started operating POTA a few years ago on a camping trip with my family. I didn’t really do much more after that with it. When I came into my current position, I had considered it but didn’t think much more of it. It wasn’t until a fellow team member and I realized we were both hams. It still baffles me that out of 12 people on this team two could be ham radio operators.

I actually asked ChatGPT to do the math (cause I had no idea how to and was far too lazy). I’ll save you all of the math symbols it gave me: There is a 1 in 1000 chance of having two or more ham radio operators in a group of 12. Crazy small world we live in. No, I don’t work in a field that would make it more common… Just saying

In any case, we floated the idea and began our plans of activating parks as we traveled. To date I’ve activated

• CA
• MO
• PA
• MI
• MS
• AL
• LA
• OR
• WA
• OK
• DE
• MD
• Guam

So this has been a blast and a huge opportunity.

Starting out

Starting out I took a radio I had. The FT-857D on my first trip. I also had a EFHW antenna laying around that I’d stashed in my RV from my first activation back on that camping trip.

Well, things didn’t work out. I had some trouble getting this antenna working. I never did figure out what was wrong with it. That activation never came to pass. Going back to the drawing board, I decided I wanted to build a simple, smaller, EFHW. The EFHW I was carrying was huge and the radio was too. I ended up with something 3d printed for the winder and homebrewed the coil for a 40/20/15/10 meter EFHW antenna. This antenna worked really well.

I deployed that little EFHW that cost me about $20 in parts all over the country and made activations. A simple throw line and weight to get it in a tree and off we went!

I quickly upgraded (or more probably downgraded) to the G90 radio. The radio isn’t a terrible radio but the receiver is just terrible in certain circumstances (like when a nearby station is on a different band). Even with filters the receiver just can’t handle it.

Settling down on a setup

I ultimately decided I wanted to get back into a much smaller setup. I’d run into a few situation (like in Washington and Guam) where deploying an EFHW had challenges, either due to space or simply no supports. In most of those cases, I was able to cobble together something of a vertical with my BuddiStick vertical but it wasn’t ideal and getting it to stay up was a nightmare sometimes with the mounts that came with it. When I was in Guam, one such instance occured and I found myself, for the whole trip!, clamping a camera tripod mount to different things (car roof rack, random cinderblocks I found on the beach… I know weird right… and in one case, a tent state to push it into the sand directly on the beach. That took a bit of rope to secure.)

Long story short it worked, but it was a pain.

I finally got fed up during my, very cold, Oklahoma activation. Darkness had fallen, and it was getting cold. I needed 3 more contacts and the antenna just kept falling over in the breeze. I made those 10 contacts but it took all my core being not to snap that antenna in half, all because of a terribly designed mount.

That night, I ordered the Chelegence MC-750 from DX Engineering and had it shipped to my hotel. It would arrive before my next planned activation.

This antenna was worlds away from the issues I’d had with the BuddiStick. Don’t get me wrong the BuddiStick is a great antenna. It works, I’ve used it effectively from all over, but those darn mounts…. enough said.

The MC-750 will be my go to antenna going forward, with a nod to the EFHW still.

New Gear

I’ve also acquired some new gear. The G90 just wasn’t cutting it for me. Truthfully, I was really looking forward to the Elecraft KX2. I’d previously owned a KX3 and quite enjoyed that radio, however availability of that radio was really limited. I instead settled on the IC-705. Aside from a few minor annoyances, I love this radio. It’s now my go to and remains in my POTA bag fulltime these days.

It’s operations are great, including a full display, built in voice keyer, built in CW keyer, etc. If I were to complain about anything really, it’s the size compared to other radios of similar power output and with greater features. Elecraft has a smaller radio but managed to stuff in an automatic antenna tuner into, yet a smaller package. The lab 599 radio is similar in features, but again smaller. The only thing both of those radios don’t have is the LCD screen. I would say I could live without the color screen to save size but it’s not a huge deal, it’d just be nice to be able to get it to pack down smaller. In any case, the IC-705 is an awesome radio. I’ll have more on that coming up over the next couple months as I work with it some more.

POTA

As mentioned earlier, POTA has been a big change this year. I’ve had some pretty awesome activations this year, got to see some different places and some great views.

Summary

In summary, this has been an interesting year. More to follow in 2025, I look forward to keeping up with this site and documenting more of these travels. I’ve started carrying my camera with me very recently and hopefully, I’ll actually start using it.

73' & Happy New Year