It would be interesting to have photographs of the different station configurations and major antennas that we have had over the years. Unfortunately, I thought of this too late!
We purchased our first home was in Burtonsville, MD. in 1969 where I put up 70' of AB-105 tower. As I recall it had a 3 el 15 meter beam and a homebuilt 13 element long yagi for 144 MHz. That is when I became interested in VHF DXing. We only stayed there for a year or so and moved up to Mt. Airy, MD. The elevation was nearly 870' above sea level. Once the 80' tower got installed you could see a far piece in most directions. A Hy-Gain TH6-DXX was the primary HF antenna with the 13 el 144 MHz yagi. Later a 432MHz yagi was placed in-between the other antennas. Also, had a number of small antennas for satellite use. The original was shown on the history page.
Shown below is my station in 1989. What a mess of equipment! Looking at this now, it seems to a difficult station to operate. On the top shelf are three antenna rotator controllers, a one-Kw amplifier for 432MHz and the Heath SB-220 for HF. The middle shelf had the packet TNC, VHF radio and keyer. The main desk ( which is a door) were two HF transceivers and of course the computer. The shelf below contained miscellaneous power supplies.
We moved again in 1979 to a larger home in the Mt. Airy area. This location was not nearly as good as the previous, it only had a good view to the West. A 90' tower was installed and over the next 20 years a multitude of antennas were used. The VHF/UHF bands never really worked well from this location. So I spent quite a bit of time doing satellite communications. The most memorable would be Oscar 13 using Mode S (Uplink on 436MHz and downlink on 2401MHz). I had built a 24" parabolic receive antenna and mounted it at the top of the tower where it had an un-obstructed view of the sky. The property was pretty heavily wooded and thus poor visibility.
In 2000 we moved from MD to Central FL and I started all over. This time I wanted to keep it simple and smaller. A AB-577 military push up mast was purchased to be the main antenna tower. This mast holds a Bencher Skyhawk HF triband antenna. It has survived all the storms we have had experienced thus far. In 2005, the Jean storm lasted for four days, with winds coming from almost everywhere. The antenna bounced all around but only twisted slightly on the mast.
This is the Skyhawk installed on the AB-577 mast.
A 40' of Rohn 25 tower was installed for VHF/UHF antennas. I wanted to see how these bands were in this area as compared to the MD. area. Unfortunately, there is very little activity and I have since replaced the VHF antennas with a cubical quad for HF.
This the five-band Thunderbolt cubical quad on the 40' tower. Not shown is a 6 meter 7 element yagi which is mounted below the quad and fixed North East.
And the most recent photograph (June 2006) of the station along with its operator.
The main HF equipment consists of a Yaesu FT-990 and FT-100D HF transceivers (center and to the right on the desk). The FT-100D is used for 6 meters.A Heathkit DX-60B has been added with some modifications to sound like a transmitter of the mid 1950's on CW. The most recent addition is a Viking Ranger II. This is just a nice transmitter to I decided that I just should have one to bring back the memories of the one I built in 1954 or so.
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