The shack of John Lawson, K5IRK.    (05 Jan 2009)


This is the present station at K5IRK.   The transmitter at the left is VFO controlled for the 40/20/15/10 meter bands and runs 6 Watts output on CW.   An old Heath power supply provides the needed DC.   The all band box at the right is the original "Progressive Receiver" from QST, November, 1981.   John tells us that it still works as it did in the beginning.     The station is temporary in this setting on a back patio at John's Florida location.     Although there are no permanent station antennas, John is still quite active in building gear, mostly from the kitchen table.   A temporary antenna sometimes is thrown into the air.


This is a view of some of John's lab gear.   The foundation is a Tek 2235 oscilloscope.   Under the DVM is a homebrew frequency counter sitting on top of a homebrew spectrum analyzer.  The right hand stack has a AD-8307 based power meter at the top.   The boxes under it are homebrew sweep generators.


John's gear includes some older equipment.  But the term "boat anchor" may not fit this collection of souvenirs from the past.   The top box is a VFO based solid state transmitter from the 1975 ARRL Handbook.   The box at the lower left is a 40/20 meter CW transmitter from the 1976 Handbook while the box at the right is a 40 meter receiver with a mechanical filter based on a DeMaw QST and Handbook design.  .