Hi, I am Tony I0JX
My radio station

 

A friend of mine keeps buying radio equipment, new or surplus, and stocking them in a room with no apparent criterion. More than an amateur radio station, that room looks like something in between an ham radio store and a surplus outlet!

It is not easy to turn a great deal of radio equipment into a nice station. In my opinion to achieve that goal a station must be:

Having several legacy radio lines, in addition to modern equipment, I had to create four interconnected operating positions. This costed me quite a complex station layout.

The main elements of my radio station are described below.

Russian amplifier with a Bird Wattcher on its top, connected
to a Bird 4715 wattmeter. The 50-MHz home built amplifier is on its left

Note: the Signal Shifter is a gift of I1PL (now I0XXR)

The GSB-201 has four 811As in parallel, with an input-choke power supply. A real beauty, that has nothing to do with those modern amplifiers advertised on QST using the same tubes!

Among my other old stuff you here see an Heathkit HW-101 transceiver (the famous Hot Water one-oh-one) with its optional CW filter and a Shure 444 microphone, an Hammarlund HQ-110 receiver,

a National NC-125 receiver,

an Hallicrafters SX-101A receiver, a Yaesu FRDX400 / FLDX400 line (this  actually belongs to I0WTD),

an Hallicrafters line, comprising an SX-117 receiver with the HA-10 LF/MF Tuner and an HT-44 transmitter with a Turner microphone and the HA-8 Splatter Guard.

another novice-style line comprising a Mosley  CM-1 receiver with an Heathkit GD-125 Q-multiplier (not shown below) and an Hallicrafters HT-40 transmitter driven by a VFO of the military T-368 transmitter,

and a pair of HRO receivers complete of all tuning units, from long waves up to 30 MHz. The top one is an HRO-5 using octal tubes (6K7, 6J7, ...) whilst the bottom one is an HRO-Senior using older tubes (6C6, 6D6, ...). Both ones work wery well.

 

 

In addition to old ham radio equipment, I also have a military station with a BC-312 receiver hooked up to BC-191 transmitter (a beast that delivers 60 watts up 30 meters). All running on dynamotors powered by a 13.8V 100A power supply. I sometimes use this set-up on 40 meters although the emission is quite chirpy (the oscillator tube is one of the four VT4-C bottles...). On top of the BC-312 you can see a BC-348 (a much nicer receiver than the BC-312).

Below you can see a portable troopers RBZ receiver, powered by four 1.5V D-cells.

To some extent, I also  like to collect old test equipment too. Look at this twin-needle meter, part of an RF power & SWR test set built by the Technical Materiel Corporation (TMC) that I bought at an hamfest.

 

My HF antenna

Picture below taken at http://maps.live.com/ shows the very place where my HF antenna is mounted. Within the black circle you can see the antenna aluminum tubes at tower top. Coordinates are:

The Mosley PRO-67-C is a 7-element Yagi for 7 bands:

This is how it looks like (a 50-MHz 5-el Tonna Yagi has now been placed at the top of the mast)

The antenna, weighing some 55 Kg, is supported by a 15 m. tower placed on the roof-top of a 5-storey city building. A tram that rides up & down the tower allows you to raise & lower the antenna by simply turning a winch crank. Uncommonly, the tram does not wrap around the tower, but it instead slides on support guides fixed to one side of the tower. This design eliminates most problems with guy wires. That tower is produced in central Italy (contact I5JVA for details).

Though it clearly being a compromise, the antenna works acceptably on all bands. In particular, SWR is remarkably low; it never triggers the automatic power back-off circuit of my HF radios, except above 14220 KHz.

This is the SWR response on 40 m.

and this is the 20 m. gain plot

(one step equals 14.4 dB)

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