Visit My Shack
This is the place I am sent to when I have misbehaved......
It reperesents a good part of nearly 20 years of my life. I wish I had more time to enjoy it. I have
included a few photos below to show just what can be squeezed into a room smaller than 2.5m x 2m.
As I get time, I will build some dedicated band pages - mainly Microwave - but one or two other bands will
possibly squeeze in. Please select from the left hand pane.
Anyway, the tour.....
This is what I see when I open the door, to save space, the door opens outwards. I use a rotating office
chair that sits centrally in the centre of the 'U' shaped benches. On the right hand side, I have my computer
work area, in front is my normal operating area and to the left is where I carry out most of my construction.
What you can't see is the book shelves all round the right and above the door and under the right hand
bench.
In front, there is a mix of commercial and homebrew kit, but most of the more interesting homebrew stuff
and test equipment is on the left hand side.
Over here, I do most of the limited building that I have time for nowadays.
I have acquired a reasonable collection of test equipment, mainly from Telford Electronics at Hoo Farm, Donnington, Telford. Most of it is best
described as working junk and includes a 12GHz Systron Donner SA and 18GHz counter.
Although working, the SA does need aligning....
The other bit of "professional" kit I have is a HP432A power meter and some big attenuators!
One real benefit I have is the two "powered" equipment racks. All the power to the kit comes from two
13A domestic sockets. There are (approx - I have lost count) 60 13 amp sockets daisy chained from these
two original sockets... However, not everything is powered on at the same time..
On the right, there are three of the five computers I use (in the shack!). The small PC on the top left is actually
the web site - its nothing special, a Pentium 233 but with 300MB RAM.It's also the mail server and the firewall.
It runs SuSE Linux 7.3 and it is very
stable. The taller PC to its right is my other Linux box - I have all my ham radio software on this. The
other smaller PC is a Windows 2000 Domain Controller. There are two other servers in here, both Windoze boxes
that I use as a file server for the family and another server that I do most of my training on.
My profession is an IT consultant, I work for Fujitsu Services. So in addition to my radio work in here,
I have also been known to build a few commercial systems and replicate known problems. All in the interest of
self development Mr Gates!
I'll add to these pages as things develop.
73, Martyn
