A little revisit to my small shortwave radio shack.

hey everybody welcome back to my channel for another little video today i'm going to revisit my shack and just show you how i have my setup i've had it set up for a long time like this now nothing's really changed too much but i have become sort of a minimalist i guess you could say i used to have a whole lot of portables and different things like that and i just looked around one day and i thought you know i don't use this stuff so i sold a lot of things and i gave a lot of my portable radios away to people wanting to try shortwave and you know whether they stay in the hobby or not they'll have a good am fm radio but i just kept what i need and what i use so because sometimes i've here lately it's you know less is more to me now i guess you could say or less whatever the saying is you know but anyway let's do a quick tour of my shack and i'll show you my little listening area and most of my listening is done after 8 p.m at night local time here in southern illinois so i don't use a lot of portables now there's nothing wrong with portable radios absolutely nothing wrong with them i just i'm just the listener that my time that i listen and everything is just mostly tabletops and but there's nothing wrong with portables if you have a good portable or any radio that you like and you enjoy using then it's a good radio but let's uh get started and i'll show you my little shack all right so let's start over here this is my computer i redone this oh last year it's got a 3.5 gig i7 processor in it two separate one terabyte solid state drives 32 gigs of ram a new audio car sound card a new video card put a memory card reader on the front right there and i use this to run my sdr play and do all my computer stuff and with this setup here my sdr play i can run sdr uno at the full 10 megahertz spectrum and it only uses about two percent system resources so it it works really good for that and my speaking of my rspdx here it is right here i got this about i don't know a month and a half after sdr play released these and antenna port c is my big alpha delta antenna b is my disco antenna and antenna a is my magnetic loop and it goes down there and it's all hooked up and it's hooked to a switch and stuff and i'll show you that here in a minute so here's my little uh receiving desk let me get this chair out of the way and of course here is my drake r8 this is from 1991. take the cover off of it here so you can see what it looks like it's still in mint condition basically uh fall of 1991 so it's 31 years old now still works perfectly this is a little remote control box that allows me to run my r8 with my remote control i can tune it turn it on turn all the functions pretty much here's my utc clock this is local time on the left and utc on the right it is radio controlled it's the mfj 14 ar 148 rc and it's 12 24 hour you can set each clock independently like i said it is radio controlled so it keeps itself updated here is a powerworks sps 30dm power supply i use that to run my drake on the drake works really good plugged into the wall but running off its power supply keeps it a lot cooler because being 32 years old you know i'm not sure how much high heat is going to hurt it now this is a little power switch where i can kill the power to the drake and still use the power supply for something else up here is stuff i really don't use right now this is the pyramid ps12kx i think it's a rated at 12 amps i don't really use it because it's sort of sort of flaky i guess you could say it it'll run at 13.8 then all of a sudden it'll drop to 11 then it may go up to 15 and i haven't used it for a while that i just set it up there because in case i need parts or something this is a ocean digital internet radio that i used to use i don't use it really now because i have a new model but it works good this is a frequency counter that i use to check the the alignment on my icon 8600 and other things i don't use it that much that's why it's on the top shelf in the box is a set of bluetooth headphones sometimes i use that with my uh bhi box here is a just a little cheap looking boom box and i when i say cheap i mean cheap it was like 20 bucks or something doesn't really work that well but it plays music from memory card files and fm works pretty good the shortwave is not great but it you know it don't get used much but just in case i want to take it out in the garage or something i use it this is an astron sl15r power supply this is what powers my icom 8600 here's a little radio shack handheld scanner i got back in the 90s it's a 50 channel i believe still works good i use that for when times we have severe weather or if i want if it's cool at night i want to sit outside in the in the swing and listen to some of the police and fire and stuff which are still available to hear around here this is a little portable uh receiver i got for five bucks at menards one day it was in a clearance thing and it does work surprisingly the shortwave works decent fm and am works decent and it has a flashlight on the end of it i thought well the flashlight's worth five bucks so let's i got that there's a power switch i can also again i can turn the power off of my icon without turning the power supply off if i want to use it for something else this is just drawers with different little things in it this is a ocean digital portable radio i used to take out in the garage sometimes when i want to stream music or something if i'm working on a car or doing something works really good here is an external speaker this goes to my unit and scanner that's from the late 90s still works great this is a grundig yacht boy 500 i haven't used this in a long time but it's all there i have the original power supply all the original documents that came with it the original case and i've had this since the 90s i got this sent to me before they were even available in in the us and i had one but i never really used i just keep it because of the nostalgia thing this is my radio shack dx390 this was also from the 90s got this new from my local radio shack when they were around and i got this at a really good price because i used to do work for the manager and stuff and i would always give him give him work at cost and in my labor went towards merchandise at radio shack and that's how i used to get things really cheap worked out over here this is a qje power supply these power supplies they're switching power supplies except for the astron but they are very quiet i have not seen any noise from them at all in my waterfall displays or anything and this powers the 1026 and the bhi box and if i need to power anything i can just plug it in there this is an rc my rca rotor control for my loop i can turn this on and i can i have some of these buttons programmed i can turn my loop to wherever i want to go to null out of station or boost the station down here is a mfj 1026 now most of 2021 i was having some interference from a bad pole a couple of miles down the road and that turned out to be a big fight with the electric company and i ended up having to call the fcc to get it to help get it taken care of and finally they fixed it and i was using this to null out i was using this actually in the loop to null out the noise from the pole but after they fixed it i have two separate shortwave i have an alpha delta on this one and a alpha delta sloper in a different part of my yard on this one and at night i can i can tweak them both to optimize my signals and it works out really good like that as a signal optimizer here is my bhi box this is a dsp unit now this i use with my drake r8 and my icom 8600 because you can see here channel 1 channel 2 stereo and bluetooth my icon 8600 is on channel 1. my drake r8 is on channel two and the speed the speakers i have this one and this one and they both they both work with my icon and my drake r8 i can either have be listening to my icon and have the sound coming out of these two speakers we're listening to the drake coming out of these two speakers or i can switch it the input and have my icon coming out of one speaker and my drake coming out of another speaker i can also select the bluetooth function and i can listen to my rspdx on a computer through this but via bluetooth where i can turn this into a bluetooth speaker system that's pretty cool this is a gps disciplined oscillator i used to use this with my ad600 when i would do satellite work and stuff like that i got bored with it so i just unhooked it now it sets on the shelf this is an mfj 616 speech intelligibility enhancer i used that for a while before i got the bhi and it would just help you know on a station you're listening to if it was very bassy you could cut the bass back and everything it was it worked a lot and then but then i got the bhi and see you have separate bass and treble you can cut the frequencies and this works a lot better than the speech intelligibility thing plus you got your dsp here that's continuous i got a little video on my channel showing this working if anybody's interested in seeing it this is a little cl clrdsp west mountain radio i used to use that before i got the bhi this it's most of this stuff is uh the only thing hooked up here is the 1026 and the bhi on these shelves that's the only thing that's hooked up is that and that the rest of these are just sitting there because i i just didn't want to get rid of them yet or and yeah just so i just have them there it looks good like that here's a cup my wife got me with my drake and has my call sign on it uh uh anniversary 70th anniversary from universal radio and here's my here's my icon 8600 got this in august of 2019 great radio really really nice radio it's expensive and i would i buy it again now probably not i would use my rspdx but i wanted an sdr that was standalone and this works perfectly for me it's re it's really a nice receiver and of course we have an mfj world clock here that just shows time zones and everything you can select whatever time zone you want so let's go down here underneath the desk this is a switch right here that i can dipole and loop this is for my icom 8600 this i can turn the loop and dipole for my drake this is a antenna switch for all my radios my big alpha delta dx ultra antennas coming in here the input top one is my sat 800 icon 8600 rspdx and the drake this down here is a this is a high pass filter now i'm about five miles away from our local transmitting tower for our local medium wave am station which is wjpf and heron now i have never had issues with am breakthrough except for the little eton 750 i had about five years ago it was horrible on it that's why i put this in but all my current receivers i have no trouble with it but i just kept it in there just in case you see why i wanted to hook up one of my little portables and it had a problem or something i could just you know tie in right here and have it this is a low-pass filter and the reason i have that is in the middle of winter probably january somewhere late at night out here where i live in the country i sometimes i can get faintly some long wave stations maybe just two or three and they may not last very long but what this does when i turn the switch on it will kill the any it will kill everything from the local am band all the way up to about 200 megahertz it'll just kill it and only allow the long wave band to come through this way i know that whatever i'm hearing is not an image and then when i'm done i just flip this back off and i have full band capability again and under here this is going to my disc own the first one is the sat 800 then the scanner unit and scanner icom the rspdx because they all go up into the vhf range this is the bias tee box for my dxe rf pro 1b magnetic loop and whatever receiver i'm using i just hook the coax to that and turn it on and yeah so that's my my shack right now and then i have one more radio from 2003 you've seen this before in some of my videos this is my satellite 800 like i said from late 2003 it has all the quality control issues fixed the tuning knob has the ball bearings in there the sink is rock solid mint condition not a spot on it as you as all my other stuff but it works very good it's been solid all these years takes my big antennas very well but yeah there's my there's my my shack right there that's just my little little corner again i know people has a lot more radios than i do and that's okay if you want to have a lot of radios it's fine there's nothing wrong with that just for me i didn't see the use in it anymore i wasn't using them they were just sitting in boxes and one day i just looked around and i thought why do i need all of this stuff let give it away sell it cheap to someone that can get some use out of it and just keep what i use and i put these in a rotation one night i use my 8600 one night i'll use my drake one night i'll use my rspdx on the computer one night i'll i'll just listen to the 800 and sometimes very very rarely i will hook up the dx390 and just tune around on it just to turn it on give it some use and sometimes during the day i don't if i'm home i don't really shortwave during the day 98 of my shortwave is done at night after 8pm here but during the day sometimes i'll just turn the scanner on and leave it on in the background you get all kinds of police and fire and ambulance and aircraft and everything around here there's only a couple of departments that have got switched digital around here in my area here in southern illinois and i can hear the rest i don't know how long it'll last i hope it lasts for a long time or at least until i'm gone but we'll see only time will tell but this setup right here works perfectly for me i've had this for 30 years out here we moved out here in the country on 40 acres we're surrounded by over 1500 of co-op farmland so it's pretty quiet just once in a while i will get some noise when they're harvesting the fields these big old combines drive by my house my field i can hear the ignition systems from sometimes when they harvest the field the grain about as the crow flies i'm sure there you've heard that saying it's about two miles from me there's six big grain bins and they have these big electric dryers on each one of them and for about a week week and a half when they're harvesting they run these big electric dryers during the day and i and sometimes early evening i can hear a little just a slight little bit of type of raspy buzzing noise but it barely moves my needle and but then at night when they shut them down it completely goes away and then when they're not running the tractors and everything it's all it's all quiet so i only have to deal with that a couple of times a year for a week or two but it's not bad it's i can still get all the real faint stations and like i said my my noise level is about s one and a half maybe s two and i hope it stays that way i mean i know noise will find me eventually and if it does after being in this for 30 plus years actually i started with radio in 1976 when i was 10. but if something ever happened out here they was to put a solar farm out here or whatever and it caused a lot of noise being on the backside of 50 now 50s now 56 this winter i would probably just get out of the hobby maybe if if my noise got so bad and i couldn't null it out but right now i'm not going to worry about that i'm just going to enjoy it while it happens it may never happen in my lifetime and but yeah that's my this is my setup and one more radio here's my this is my new intranet radio this is the wr800d ocean digital it's stereo and really nice like 30 000 stations in there and i have about 25 international broadcasters that brought also broadcast on shortwave in here and then some that left shortwave is in here voice of grease is in here it's exact same feed that i used to hear on shortwave a lot of people say oh no once they leave shortwave that's it no it's not it's not it voice of greece is on here that's the exact same programs i used to listen to on the shortwave radio australia is on here that's the same programs i used to listen to on australia because i've got recordings of it from the shortwave it's exact same feed i've got other ones in here and if the conditions are bad wrong time of year wrong time of day i want to hear the station which is the goal for me is to hear the station sometimes i'll listen to it on this because that's the only choice i have at the moment i'd rather listen to it on shortwave but sometimes you don't get that option but yeah here this is again this is my station this is where i've i spent a lot of my nights i don't listen every night because i don't care what you do you can do something to the extreme and you just start getting burnt out so in order to prevent that i will i'll listen for a couple of days and then i may take a day off and just watch a movie or something then i'll come back and listen again or you know something like that but this yeah this is my little corner it's it's simple minimalistic but it works very very well and it's very convenient for me so thanks for watching this long-winded video and i will see you guys the next time take care everybody

Channel: Southern Illinois Shortwave Radio.

Views: 5,907

Keywords: shortwave radio, shortwave shack, radio shack

Id: FWCsFszgLRY

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022