Foundations of Amateur Radio
When I first started in this hobby I found myself surrounded by other amateurs who all seemed to have a spare room in their house, or a spare building near their house, or even a property somewhere, dedicated to amateur radio. There was an endless parade of equipment, antennas, tools, workshops, spare parts and the like. Frankly it was overwhelming.
A decade on, I have some perspective to share on that first exposure. For me the hobby was brand new. I didn't have a family history, there were no amateur friends I'd grown up with, no electronics uncle or anything even remotely resembling any of that. What I was exposed to wasn't a new thing, it represented something that had been going on for years, decades and lifetimes even.
It quickly became apparent that having a shack was desirable, but in my case, at the time, unobtainable, so instead I did the next best thing I could think of. I built a shack in my car. That was a journey that took several years to make. At the end of it, I removed my radio from the car and moved it onto a spare table in my office.
I have spent countless enjoyable and sometimes frustrating hours in my car shack and I learnt that it's almost always temporary. If you're not the exclusive user of the car, then your shack isn't always available and in that case it also needs to be family friendly, as-in, no cables, mounts, brackets and the like that can cause damage to a person, or the equipment. This limits the options you have.
At the end of my car journey, I had a spare battery in the back, the radio and tuner were mounted under the floor next to the spare tyre, there was an antenna mount attached to the car, there was braiding throughout the car, connecting all the body panels together and the remote control head was detachable from a suction mount that doubled as a mobile phone holder. Antennas, one for HF, one for VHF were stowed against the roof lining with a strap around the roof hand grab of the rear passenger. An external speaker was mounted below the head rest of the centre rear passenger.
What I learnt was that this setup was good for short stints, for mobile operation, for contests on the run and for working DX at lunch time at the beach. Trying to do digital modes, attempting to work a pile-up, or doing several other activities I love were not really feasible and as a result I decided to pull it all out.
At this point all that remains in the car are the braiding, the control lead, the speaker, the coax and the antenna mount. I plan to rebuild my car shack in the not too distant future. More on that in a moment.
I moved house and found myself in an office that was perfect for multiple reasons. It was separate from the rest of the living space, so I didn't need to put away stuff. It was big enough to house a dedicated radio table and it's got pretty simple access to the outside world for running coax. It gives me a dedicated place to do radio and have stuff set-up permanently.
I noticed one thing after having this available.
I didn't actually get on-air any more than when I was using my car shack. If anything it's less. I think it's because it's also my office and I already spend plenty of time doing office activities that playing radio isn't all that different. I'm going to keep my set-up, but I'm going to go back to my roots and add a radio back into my car.
It's still a family car, so I need to consider the other uses that it's put to, but I think I can make it work. I recently installed an 80 Amp Hour battery with an automatic charging circuit. It was put there to power the dash-cams, but it was scaled with amateur radio in mind.
I don't yet know which radio I'm going to put into the car, I really do like my FT-857d, but there are other options available to me, so I'm going to experiment.
One fundamental change I'm going to make is that the radio will be installed in such a way that it can be easily unplugged and removed. Not because I want to remove it from the car, but because I want to be able to go even lighter, take the radio onto the beach, or into a park or up a summit. I'll likely bolt the whole lot into a Pelican case and make it a mobile go-unit that happens to live in my car.
I don't think I'll add digital functionality at first, but I'm eyeing off the idea of dedicating an old mobile phone, which is essentially a computer, screen, battery and internet connection in one to the task, but I'll let you know how that goes.
What I do know, with hindsight, is that less is more.
I'm Onno VK6FLAB
