My Lake Shack

[vmishg80]

Hi everyone,

Hope your're doing well as I enjoy this board as well as all the hands on information - Thanks...

I'm digital as I live in Minneapolis and have a ton of gear/antenna's. When I go to my lake, I had withdrawl on scanning as the counties of WI are VHF. I pulled out some very old radios that were "good ol' workhorses" in the old days and here are some pic's of what I just set up. My VHF kenwood is hooked to an Antenex, tuned to my radios & the scanner VHF antenna is one of my first RS little junkies from many years ago - It really rocks still. Also, there's a pic of one of my 25W Kenwood's + Tekk's (5W) that I used in my logging days. The Tekk's are really nice as they've been beat up so bad and one even fell out of my carhart pocket once and into the creek about 3 feet deep. I dunked down after it, got soaked but the radio still worked just fine. Now the radio's are set for lake comm's and another 25W Kenwood is in my truck as cell coverage is really poor so when I go on Sunday morning to get the paper at the store, my Wife can radio me for juice, doughnuts or other supplies. The PVC entry into the house is a breeze to do and it looks like another utility so no one takes a second glance. It's still a blast to VHF ! Enjoy...

 

[bezking]

Pretty nice!

 

[hoser147]

Nice setup. What did you use for the mast for your antennas?............Hoser147

 

[vmishg80]

Hoser147 -

Thanks for the reply -

The main mast is from RS and I spray primed & then painted to a color that I guessed would match my siding. It's darker that I would like but when I was at Home Depot, I thought it was OK. I did put a support bracket where it meets the soffit and sprayed it a cameo white so that worked well. The mast is sitting on a little rock footing and the soffit bracket only keeps it from falling over. As for the old RS VHF scanner anntena, it was cobble together from some pvc parts laying around so it sstands off somewhat from the mast.

Pete

 

[Grog]

I like the PVC standoff, simple and cheap.

 

[spiritwolfpr]

Hello Friends:

Nice ,not all over the place like mine.-Clean

 

[RESCUE4NFD]

Lake Shack

Cool Shack.......

 

[vmishg80]

Thanks all,

I spent a lot of time, as you all have, tweeking stuff. My biggest "risk" was drilling a hole through the rim joist to put the PVC through. I was easy and then a little caulk + electrician putty on the outside. Now I can run more feeds through it easily.

My lake shack is in Chippewa County WI so I get a ton of VHF from Chippewa, Rusk, Barron and Eau Claire Counties. There's a lot of interesting things to listen to as well as in my truck I have the County highway dept's programmed. It's really useful when I'm driving back to Mpls. in bad weather (esp winter) as I can hear the guys discussing the road conditions and where they've sanded/salted and still need to go.

Pete

 

[ScanDaBands]

I have the County highway dept's programmed. It's really useful when I'm driving back to Mpls. in bad weather (esp winter) as I can hear the guys discussing the road conditions and where they've sanded/salted and still need to go.

Pete

When I lived up in Maine , that was a true blessing to have , I worked second shift "when all the snow comes" you know what I mean living there I'm sure....that and the tolls along the interstate (I-95) , with my Austin Spectra on top I could hear them (all) no matter which I went home , it was cool to have the tolls because they were always doing wreck reports so I'd know what was ahead of me.

NICE SHACK by the way.....nice and neat looking.

 

[n8emr]

Nice shack, The 705's are nice little utility radios

 

[mfuller1950]

Nice set up, what is the white fiberglass antenna ??

 

[kyguy]

Nice setup ya have there!

 

[AZScanner]

Is that an old 2026? I had one of those back in the day. I remember adding a connection for a 9 volt battery to it so that I could take it out of the car without losing the programming.

Nice looking setup!

 

[vmishg80]

mfuller1950 - The fiberglass antenna is Antenex. It's tuned to VHF 150mhz to 155mhz.

Yes, a Pro-2026 & the bottom one is a pro-2021. I really like my old 2021 but the scan speed is really slow. I know there's a MOD from DK that can speed it up but have not had the time.

The Antenex antenna is connected to the Kenwood VHF on it's own. The 2 scanners I decied to "try" off the same RS antenna (to minimize the amount of antennas on my mast). Mind you it was an experiment and all I used was a coax "T" to split the signal to each radio. I was quite amazed as both radios were picking up all the surrounding counites perfectly - it's all rural VHF stuff so kind of forgiving. It's not the optimal way to do this and I'm not using heavy coax but it was cheep and it's at the lake. All my stuff in Mpls I use LMR400 and each radio has it's own antenna, no slpitting but I need that for the Digial systems there.

 

[radionerd13669]

Very nice shack!A+ Now we gotta see you home shack maybe?

 

[T-nuklz]

Nice shack, I like the 2026 i run it in my mobile setup.