After I started with amateur radio, I needed a place to put the radios and work on the hobby. My main desk is usually piled up with crap, and it didn’t need any more crap. As a stop-gap, I brought in a small computer desk that used to be my mom’s, but I intended to build a desk with drawers for extra storage. The desk project went through several design changes and was completely different from my original concept. It also took waaay longer than I expected. The full story of the desk odyssey is here. Here are the original design and the final product:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I decided to get into another part of the radio hobby. Ham radio is actually a very broad set of hobbies. Some people refer it as “the hobby of a thousand hobbies.” The activity I started out with is called VHF/UHF (Very High Frequency/Ultra High Frequency). This is a generally short-range form of communication used for local emergency response work as well as social communications between local hams. Another major part of the hobby is HF (High Frequency), which is done with different (more expensive) equipment on different frequency bands. This’s often what people think of when they think of hams communicating across the world, and that’s the goal. I decided to get into this more advanced part of the hobby and that meant buying more gear. So, (while trying to get the desk done) I needed to research the kind of radio gear I would need for HF work. There were a lot of considerations in the decisions on equipment. I won’t bore you with all of them, but if you’re interested, check out my Radio Considerations page.

 

The next project was to create a rack for the gear that would fit on my desk and also into a case that would allow me both to take it on a plane while traveling or transport it to a location where I can operate portably. Also, we had decided to go on a cruise of New England and Canada, and I wanted to try to communicate from the ship. (I did not wind up taking the radio on the cruise, and I haven’t done any portable work.) The rack was a challenge, too. Here are the details.

 

Finally, I finished the desk and it held together. I got the rack together and mounted the electronics in it. It fit in the case and on the desk. I was able to set up a “stealth” HF antenna.

 

It still took me quite awhile before I operated much on HF, but I finally made my first contact–a ham in Portland, OR. I had some learning to do and I needed some help from other hams before I was able to make any contacts, but a ham radio license is also called a “license to learn,” so that’s what I did! Just to complicate things further, I stated working on interfacing my radio gear with my computer. There are several ways to do it, and it involves a lot of internet research and trial and error, so I can spend as much time and money as I have on this hobby! In the 3 years since I got my license, I’ve learned that I will always need that license to learn, because the more I learn, the more interesting challenges present themselves.