With the son sharing my office these days we decided to move things around a bit. Basically we swapped positions in the office, I took his side and he mine. This allowed us to reclaim some wasted space caused by my L-shaped desk needing to be backed off of one wall to allow access to the windows. We also relocated the TV monitors so they are above my desk, one over each side. This allows him to more easily view one as he has grown to like watching airport cams. I am working on him to take an interest in rail-cams but so far no such luck!
With him being off this weekend for the holiday we decided to make the swap. We first moved all the chairs, cabinets etc. out of the office, disconnected the cables (Power, networking, antennas) from each desk and danced them across the room. With hard tile floors and nylon sliders under the desk legs that was pretty simple. I then started pulling apart some of the wiring for my radio cabinet since I was going to move it from my right to my left on the L-shaped desk. Being a righty it made much more sense, plus that side of the desk is longer (80 inches vs. 72) and deeper 30 inches vs 27. This gives me more working space on both sides.
Not much more in the way of equipment this time out. I did replace my TYT MD-9600 with an Anytone AT-5888 for 2M/440/GMRS. That TYT was OK but hard to program or deal with VFO mode. In addition the software will not connect any longer, I have no clue why.
On top of the radio cabinet is my AT-5888 dual bander and a Kenwood TK-8180 for GMRS. In the smaller cabinet are 2 Astron 25A power supplies, one for the HF rig and the other for everything else. The cabinet is the same 4u Turret rack (see The Desk Rack of 2021) but flipped upside down. This allows the radios to tilt downward as they are fairly elevated. This also provides a slanted surface for the mixer above. This is the Behringer Xenyx X2222USB that I have had for a few months. I was able to source proper cables for it so they all fall to the rear nicely.
In the main cabinet are 4 BCD536's, an SDS200, a BCD996XT and BCD996P2, Icom R8600 and IC-7300, along with an IC-705 on top that can be popped out for field use. Each of the Uniden scanners except the SDS200 have USB-1 cables with the small end cut off and replaced with a DB-9 to connect to the rear GPS port for computer connection. The SDS200 has both Ethernet and USB connections, the USB is via a down-facing right-angle connector suggested by member "Fixitt". Both of the Icom's also have USB, the R8600 also has Ethernet.
The radio computer is the same Intel Hades Canyon NUC I have been using for a while. It has plenty of horsepower to run it all. I tried switching to it for all my stuff to see if I could be weaned off my M1 Mac for writing, browsing and entertainment. I used it as my daily driver for a week or so and, while it worked fine, it just wasn't a Mac. I then tried to use the Mac for the radios as well as the rest of my life online. While I was able to get all of the scanners to work with the front USB ports I was unable to get the rear ones to work as there were no drivers I could find that worked with ARM processors in Windows 11 thru Parallels. I was also unable to get the Icoms to be recognized. I decided to go back to having a separate computer for the radios.
The Mac is my M1Max MacBook Pro operating in clamshell mode with 2 of the monitors, the third monitor being connected to the NUC. All three are 4K 27 inch Acers.
The two 50-inch TV's mounted on the wall are used mostly for watching live rail or airport cams but can also watch news, entertainment etc. I can connected either to one of the computers if needed. I am also thinking about getting a Geochron Atlas at some point, especially if I start working HF on a more frequent basis.
His desk is directly behind mine, he has a full-fledged water-cooled gaming rig he built with full RGB connected to 3 4K 27" monitors and a laptop for work. He also set up a managed switch and gateway as well as a couple mesh WiFi access points. We have 2.5GB fiber to the house for internet access and it works really well.
I hope to get some outside antennas down the road, we are going to see if we can sneak a scanner antenna on the roof, hidden from the HOA. I am also thinking about a flagpole antenna at some point for HF. The antennas from prior builds in the attic still remain.