My tidied up shack

[n1zyy]

Not the fanciest or most elaborate on here, but if you could see a before-and-after... (But you won't, because I don't dare post the mess that was the "before" )

N1ZYY Shack

n1zyy-shack-640x480.jpg (62.46 KiB) Viewed 979 times

Larger photo and some more details at my draft site at http://n1zyy2.hosted.boston/radio/scanner/ham-shack/

BCD536HP scanner on the left, next to a 403-470 MHz CDM1550. Northcomm makes this panel; it's two Jotto Desk mounts, making it easy to swap out what's in there. It's a bit pricier than the Alberta Radio ones on the left, but it's worth the money. (The Alberta Radios are terrific too, though.)

The real workhorse radios are the Kenwood NX-5700 and NX-5800 on the upper right, set up for DMR and P25. Below those, a pair of XTL1500s, one for 900 MHz and one for 450-520 MHz. I did hex-edit it down into 70cm, hence the mic. I've been using it mostly for monitoring stuff with lots of MDC, because DOS muting works great on that but only seems to work reliably for FleetSync on the Kenwoods. (They can encode/decode MDC, just not mute it.)

I need to do a little more antenna and cabling work to be able to actually run all of these at the same time, but so far I'm really happy with how this is working out.

[kelton.dray]

I've been using it mostly for monitoring stuff with lots of MDC, because DOS muting works great on that but only seems to work reliably for FleetSync on the Kenwoods. (They can encode/decode MDC, just not mute it.)

MDC Mute.png (10.35 KiB) Viewed 944 times

[n1zyy]

MDC Mute.png

I appreciate that. I've found that it's pretty good at masking the burst when it's at the very beginning of a transmission, but it's utterly ineffective on post-IDs, or on subsequent transmissions when the repeater's keyed up.

[JBP]

Looks great Matt! The wood grain with the black panels gives it a very classic look and a nice collection of radios to boot.

Good work pulling it all together.

[W1KNE]

Looks sharp. Clean and easy to use!

[n1zyy]

Thanks for the kind words! I've had the idea in mind for a long time and finally bought all the stuff to make it happen.

No photo, but tonight I got a new antenna up in the attic. (The joys of living in a condo...) I've had a little 5-element Yagi covering 450-470 MHz pointed into Boston, but Boston Fire was always quite weak. The new one is a 7-element Laird YF450112, where the driven element is a folded dipole, giving a range of 450-490 MHz. Interestingly, the specs in the box say 440-490, and I'm getting a 1.5:1 SWR down to 433 MHz. Boston Fire's now about -100 dBm here, which is about a 10 dB improvement. I wasn't sure I'd see that much of a difference, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Now I just need a couple extra runs of coax for the 900 MHz omni and the discone for the scanner...