I know, I change my shack around more than most hams change their undies but I had some good reasons. With the prior shack almost 7 months ago (Can't just leave it alone...) I was due for a change. The biggest issue I had was depth. The console was 14 inches deep which left a very small portion of the desktop left for things like keyboards, TV dinners and beer glasses.
While my SecretLab Magnus ProXL is 32 inches deep, there really is only 26 inches usable due to the wire management tray at the rear. The rear 6 inches is under a flip-lid to allow me to stash and hid the wires for the monitors etc. The monitor arms attach at the rear of the front portion so in reality the back 6 inches are not usable for desk purposes. If I designed this desk I would have had the hinged door to the rear of the desk and not the top. Otherwise I love the desk, it is as sturdy as any I have owned, the up/down motion is swift and smooth and even at the highest "Stand" levels it is stable. Being made of steel all around it has many magnetic accessories and I highly recommend it.
Had I used a less deep console than the 14-inch one I had it would have been better. I specified the 14-inches due to the depth of the Icom racks, If I come up with some solution with less-deep racks for the Icoms in the future I might revisit it.
So, after some deep considerations I decided to revisit my former 10u flat cabinet from AudioRax. Since the 3-Bay cabinet had 9u in total I figured this would work well. In my most recent configuration of the 3-bay/3u cabinet I had the 2 SDS200's, the IC-705 and the dual bander on a shelf next to the desk, with the other 8 scanners and 2 Icoms (R8600 and IC-7300) in the case. The 12v power supply was on top of the console.
So in my new setup I have pretty much the same radios except I deleted the BCT15X and added a DMR Pi-Star based hot spot. The 10u cabinet itself is now on a 3-draw mini-dresser I stole from my wife's sewing room, she had used it for storing cloth scraps. It was just the right height (31 inches), depth (16 inches) and width (30 inches) to hold the cabinet. It is nice and sturdy, and the drawers are perfect for programming cables, accessories and other junque that clutters up an office these days.
From bottom to top are:
The Anytone has the USB port on the side towards the front, the USB cable is there and pokes in thru the faceplate. The Icoms have USB ports on the rear so the cable hides nicely.
I leave the 260 and IC-705 on top since I take them out in the field or the car occasionally.
The computer desk cleans up nicely now. While intended for gamers (of which I am not!) it is perfect for my needs. It is 70 inches wide, sit/stand, sturdy all-steel construction and built specifically for a no-visible wires look. There is a single power cable coming out of the left leg that has an outlet in the wire tray, the monitors and PC are plugged into that. The only other wires are the Ethernet cable coming from my switch and 2 USB cables coming from my radio cabinet.
Disregard the white wires in the picture, they go to a TV and a clock on the wall and will be hidden this fall when we paint the office and do some drywall work.
The PC itself is a home-built one in a Fractal North case. The processor is an AMD Ryzen 7 7800, the MoBo an MSI Z790 and the GPU an Asrock Radeon RC6600. There is 64GB of RAM and 2 2-TB SSD's. It is plenty powerful enough to run a dozen instances of ProScan, ARC-xx as well as other stuff and still let me do my normal browsing and YouTube watching stuff all day long. It rests in a support under the desk so as the desk rises it goes with it.
So, if you have read my other shack tales you will know that I hate seeing wires, even more than my wife does. I take great pains (and expenditures) to avoid seeing them. What I don't mind so much however is cramming them in where they are not seen. With a confined space such as this every square inch counts! You can see the unholy rat's nest I have inside the cabinet:
This picture was taken in the shop prior to installation of the cabinet, since then I added a second USB hub, second multicoupler and a couple network cables (for the SDS200's) as I was waiting for some cables to arrive. Inside the cabinet are:
The dresser itself is on nylon sliders so I can easily swing it out and around to work on the wiring. After placing the loaded cabinet on the dresser I plugged in the power strip into an outlet, connected the antennas and plugged in the 2 USB cables into the computer. After about 20 minutes of readdressing a dozen or so comm-ports I was off and running.
So I have had this less than 24 hours and am already thinking of some changes. I have enough space to put the R8600 on the top of the dresser alongside the cabinet, if I want to do much dial twiddling I just might do so as it is really too high to do much of that now. I al also trying to think of a nice way to mount the hotspot so I can see the display, perhaps I will mount it on the front panel in front of the power supply. Maybe this weekend...
Let's see how long this one lasts!
While my SecretLab Magnus ProXL is 32 inches deep, there really is only 26 inches usable due to the wire management tray at the rear. The rear 6 inches is under a flip-lid to allow me to stash and hid the wires for the monitors etc. The monitor arms attach at the rear of the front portion so in reality the back 6 inches are not usable for desk purposes. If I designed this desk I would have had the hinged door to the rear of the desk and not the top. Otherwise I love the desk, it is as sturdy as any I have owned, the up/down motion is swift and smooth and even at the highest "Stand" levels it is stable. Being made of steel all around it has many magnetic accessories and I highly recommend it.
Had I used a less deep console than the 14-inch one I had it would have been better. I specified the 14-inches due to the depth of the Icom racks, If I come up with some solution with less-deep racks for the Icoms in the future I might revisit it.
So, after some deep considerations I decided to revisit my former 10u flat cabinet from AudioRax. Since the 3-Bay cabinet had 9u in total I figured this would work well. In my most recent configuration of the 3-bay/3u cabinet I had the 2 SDS200's, the IC-705 and the dual bander on a shelf next to the desk, with the other 8 scanners and 2 Icoms (R8600 and IC-7300) in the case. The 12v power supply was on top of the console.
So in my new setup I have pretty much the same radios except I deleted the BCT15X and added a DMR Pi-Star based hot spot. The 10u cabinet itself is now on a 3-draw mini-dresser I stole from my wife's sewing room, she had used it for storing cloth scraps. It was just the right height (31 inches), depth (16 inches) and width (30 inches) to hold the cabinet. It is nice and sturdy, and the drawers are perfect for programming cables, accessories and other junque that clutters up an office these days.
From bottom to top are:
- IC-7300. BCD996XT, BCD996P2
- 4 BCD536HP's
- 2 SDS200's
- 12v/25a Icom power supply, Anytone D578UVIII
- R8600, IC-705, BCD260DN (The Hotspot is behind the IC-705 out of view)
The Anytone has the USB port on the side towards the front, the USB cable is there and pokes in thru the faceplate. The Icoms have USB ports on the rear so the cable hides nicely.
I leave the 260 and IC-705 on top since I take them out in the field or the car occasionally.
The computer desk cleans up nicely now. While intended for gamers (of which I am not!) it is perfect for my needs. It is 70 inches wide, sit/stand, sturdy all-steel construction and built specifically for a no-visible wires look. There is a single power cable coming out of the left leg that has an outlet in the wire tray, the monitors and PC are plugged into that. The only other wires are the Ethernet cable coming from my switch and 2 USB cables coming from my radio cabinet.
Disregard the white wires in the picture, they go to a TV and a clock on the wall and will be hidden this fall when we paint the office and do some drywall work.
The PC itself is a home-built one in a Fractal North case. The processor is an AMD Ryzen 7 7800, the MoBo an MSI Z790 and the GPU an Asrock Radeon RC6600. There is 64GB of RAM and 2 2-TB SSD's. It is plenty powerful enough to run a dozen instances of ProScan, ARC-xx as well as other stuff and still let me do my normal browsing and YouTube watching stuff all day long. It rests in a support under the desk so as the desk rises it goes with it.
So, if you have read my other shack tales you will know that I hate seeing wires, even more than my wife does. I take great pains (and expenditures) to avoid seeing them. What I don't mind so much however is cramming them in where they are not seen. With a confined space such as this every square inch counts! You can see the unholy rat's nest I have inside the cabinet:
This picture was taken in the shop prior to installation of the cabinet, since then I added a second USB hub, second multicoupler and a couple network cables (for the SDS200's) as I was waiting for some cables to arrive. Inside the cabinet are:
- Ethernet Switch
- 2 8-port Stridsberg Multicouplers
- 2 USB Hubs (10 and 13 ports)
- PowerPole block.
- AC power strip/surge protector
The dresser itself is on nylon sliders so I can easily swing it out and around to work on the wiring. After placing the loaded cabinet on the dresser I plugged in the power strip into an outlet, connected the antennas and plugged in the 2 USB cables into the computer. After about 20 minutes of readdressing a dozen or so comm-ports I was off and running.
So I have had this less than 24 hours and am already thinking of some changes. I have enough space to put the R8600 on the top of the dresser alongside the cabinet, if I want to do much dial twiddling I just might do so as it is really too high to do much of that now. I al also trying to think of a nice way to mount the hotspot so I can see the display, perhaps I will mount it on the front panel in front of the power supply. Maybe this weekend...
Let's see how long this one lasts!
