Members’ shacks

First a picture of a historical photo from 1960 back in the days of 288MHz. This is Vic VK5JH who was an active portable operator in the 50’s. I worked him many times. First as an unofficial station VK5ZCL (!!!) in 1956 on 288MHz. A story to be told some time.

My reason for posting this was to show the way shacks have changed over the years. Everything you see in Vic’s shack was homebrew and made from individual parts. Compare this with modern equipment that has multiple functions and tiny integrated circuits that contains millions of transistors and can change the way they work just by changing the instructions sent to them. In the early days you didn’t need a heater in winter.

John VK5DJ

 Norbert thought some pictures of the Macquarie Island ham operations might be of interest for the SERG website ham shack folder. For all of the ham operation during 2018 and most of the time in 2019 on Macquarie island ANARE station I used the old emergency HF receiver building (now known as the ham shack) as it still had feedthrough insulators through the hut wall. The ham station IC-7300 was set up on a bunk bed, AH4 ATU installed in an adjacent utility room just below the feedthroughs. A 9m squidpole attached to the deck railing supported the vertical HF longwire just outside the ham shack door. Shortly before the ship arrived to resupply the station in March 2019 all the gear was removed from the ham shack. To continue ham operations as long as possible I set up a temporary station in the Comcen office. The IC-7300 was connected to the station 6m vertical HF antenna mounted on the side of the office. One of the joys for a geeky tech like me was, among other things, working on the ANARESAT satcom system.

Send your shack photo to john@vk5dj.com

Any definition is fine, I will adjust it to match the others. Add comments in the email if you want something other than your name, callsign and date under the photo.