Update: November 20, 2007.
(Scroll down to the end of this section for some old
photos, but new to the site.)
Our ham shacks have all changed a lot in the
last 50 years. This was my basement shack in 1957.
The gear, left to right, consisted of (1) the resonator section of a remotely
tuned VFO (built from an ARRL Handbook of that era), a Johnson Viking Adventure
transmitter (a 50 Watt kit rig of the time), a homebrew receiver for 80
through 15 meters (crystal controlled converter ahead of a BC-453), and
a National NC-46 which was mostly just used for SWL applications. The
chassis on the shelf includes the power supply and the oscillator tube for
the remotely tuned VFO.
As things went on, my shack took on more and
more of a lab character. The view in 2004 is shown below:
This view includes all sorts of gear that is put on the air, and a lot
more that was used for experiments of various sorts.
Today my shack is isolated from the lab part
of the activity. The lab is still active, shown below:
This view shows the main oscilloscope (Tek-465M), two spectrum analyzers,
a couple of HP signal generators, a Wavetek function generator, and considerable
plunder. The little plastic box sitting on the table is an AADE LC Meter,
which has become a major element of this ham lab.
The shack is now in a separate room that also
serves as an office. The computer can now be used to log contacts and
send CW as well as the more usual chores that we give to such a machine.
This is a June 2007 photo of W7ZOI. The most recent addition is a new
general coverage receiver, an Icom R75. That's the box with the yellow
display. The
blue boxes shown are, left to right, 6M SSB/CW transceiver, QRP transmitter
for 40/20/15 Meters, and the matching receiver that goes with the QRP rig.
A Yaesu FT-7 is directly above the homebrew receiver. A small 40M receiver
and a little portable transceiver are above the larger QRP transmitter.
A transmatch is on the shelf above the VHF sideband transceiver. The
aluminum box under the main receiver is an amplifier that provides 40 W output
on 40 and 20 meters, just a dB or two more than my old Viking Adventure.
The box above the FT-7 includes a 100 Watt dummy load, an attenuator,
and a bridge. The top shelf supports power supplies. A box on that
shelf contains a dial mechanism and variable capacitor from an old BC-221;
this is a project in progress. The box to the right of that is a power
meter. A Sony ICF-SW7600GR battery operated general coverage receiver
(with CW/SSB) sits on top of the R75.
I'm sometimes ask about the differences between
the two forms of ham shack that I have experienced. After a couple of years
with the one shown immediately above, I've concluded that I miss having measurement
gear on the same table as the equipment itself. The oldest stuff (1950s)
was the most fun, but I'm not ready to fully embrace the "boat anchor" craze.
Here are a couple of old photos that I pulled from the archives.
This "Mac," W7KIX. I first started wondering about this amateur radio stuff when I heard Mac on my crystal set. I would sit and listen to it as I folded newspapers prior to my route in the early hours of the morning. Mac was an early riser and could be found on 75 Meters with his 1 KW to push pull 813s, modulated by push pull 803s. The receiver was an all band "16 tube super blooper." Even the knobs were homebrew.
This shot was taken the morning after an all night session where we finished building the 128 element bed-spring collinear antenna and put it on the air to make moonbounce contacts with the folks at Stanford. I think this was in 1975 or so. That was great fun! The photo shows Fred (wa7tzy) and Susan (wb7bst) Telewski with w7zoi closest to the antenna.