My "Shack" - nothing to get excited about

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mtindor

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My Yaesu FT-100 is not shown (I have it in the closet - works fine, it's just not sitting out adding to the clutter). My Icom R-75 should be here Tuesday.

Pic #1: Raritan KVM on top of my gaming computer, on the left. Flat screen in middle. Clutter on the right. To the right of the keyboard is an old switch I pulled offline after discovering last week that it was generating a ton of spurious signals which hampered my scanner and HF monitoring. My PSR-500 is feeding audio to this computer, which in turn is streaming the Jefferson County Ohio MARCS stream to ScanMiamiValley.Com.

Pic 2: Shows my RS PRO-97 on top of the gaming computer. Also seen is my PSR-500 laying there to the left of my work computer amongst the clutter. The PSR-500 is connected to a PAR filter tuned to block ~190 mhz region to get rid of WTOV-9 signal swampage. From the PAR there is coax to the ouside. Miscellaneous computer parts can be seen as well as my work PC.

A PRO-90 can be seen behind (in front of) my white work computer. This scanner is feeding the Jefferson County OH PS TRS to ScanMiamiValley.com via my work computer.

Pic 3: A closeup of the junk

Pic 4: The PRO-90 on top of my Audigy 24-bit USB audio

Pic 5: My PSR-500 with the PAR on top

Pic 6: My PRO-97 - There just for S&G. It usually sits in the living room

Pic 7: Crappy switch, clutter, Linksys WRT54G, phone

Pic 8: Actual useful work office space in the adjoining room in my home office

Pic 9: Closeup of the PAR filter

Most pics share one thing in common - the clutter. I can't be productive with my equipment being up on shelves out of reach. I want it all right next to me.

Outside antennas consist of a Cushcraft 2m ARX2B omni and a Cushcraft 2m/440 antenna, each up 20 feet. They are lousy for scanning most of the bands but fairly good near their respective resonant ranges. The ARX2B is hooked up to the PSR-500. Also I have an 80m dipole up.

Of note is the fact that in the past three months I've spent no more than a few hours in either of the office rooms. I typically am doing my work from the laptop somewhere else in the house and RDPing into those machines if need be. I'm a *nix admin, so most of my work is done via a secure shell (SSH) connection to some *nix machine located off premises.

I've got two DSL connections - both 3M/512K SBC-ATT. One is used for general use of all devices in the home, and one has a static IP block and is used only by some client machines in the closet.

I didn't include a pic of four PCs I have in the closet with their associated equipment since they are all labeled with private client information that I do not care to make public

So that's it - nothing to see, but still might be entertaining for someone.

Mike
 

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mtindor

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pics 6 through 9

Here are pics 6 through 9, description in first post.

Mike
 

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mtindor

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hoser147 said:
I Got one of those catchall mugs on my desktop and usually a bunch of other stuff too.:lol: ......Looks good Mike....................Hoser

Randy,

ROFL, you noticed that 'catchall' mug. that's funny. I end up throwing just about anything that lands on the floor [which i subsequently step on and then cuss] into there - screws for the PC, connectors, adaptors. The pens/pencils are for show - I'm such a computer nerd that I rarely rarely use a pen or pencil.

Thanks for the nice words.

Mike
 

STA75

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Mike, I think I have been to a shack that looks like that! Your shack serves the county well and you're doing a great job.
Rick
 

mtindor

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STA75 said:
Mike, I think I have been to a shack that looks like that! Your shack serves the county well and you're doing a great job.
Rick

Thanks Rick! And yeah, somehow I don't think you're a stranger my shack.

Will
 

mtindor

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JFish said:
Now I feel better, knowing my space looks about the same... After looking at so many pictures of others ; they are always nice and organized ...

Guess it all depends on ones style and how organized they tend to be (or at least how they organize). Trust me, I've seen some people post some really awesome pics of their beautiful shacks that some of us drool over. I have seen others post modest shacks which are very neat. I envy them all. But, being neat and tidy in the shack just isn't conducive to productive listening / operation for me.

Mike
 

pathalogical

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Hello fellow Torontonian ! That's what they call us up here. Nice phone, I have the same one. Nice psr 500, I'd like the same one. Will you be adding more to your Review link ?
 

mtindor

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pathalogical said:
Hello fellow Torontonian ! That's what they call us up here. Nice phone, I have the same one. Nice psr 500, I'd like the same one. Will you be adding more to your Review link ?

I certainly should... but I don't know when I'll get around to it. I still find it difficult to modify existing content in the scanner via the keypad. I always use win500. And I don't carry it around much. I do scan with it a lot, and I wouldn't even consider selling it given its sensitivity and how great it sounds on the local digital trunked systems compared to the BC396/99T that I used to have. It's an ongoing battle getting it to play nice with very strong VHF signals present though.

I still have a major gripe about the inability to alpha tag individual freqencies in a trunked system (which would be handy when I have a single system programmed in with multiple frequencies from different sites). But based upon what some have told me, they will likely never give the option to alpha tag individual freqs in a trunked system.

So I really have only have three gripes - (1) difficulty finding/managing existing content in the scanner via the keypad, (b) inability to alpha tag trunked freqs and (c) severe overload on VHF from strong local signals. But taking those three things into consideration, the outstanding sensitivity and performance on digital trunked systems far outweighs my gripes :)

As far as Torontonian, I don't think anybody calls us anything nearly as nice down here :) Toronto, Ohio is the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. Thankfully I live outside of the city limits rofl.

Mike
 

mtindor

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N1BHH said:
What a mess! Looks like mine!

Haha. You know, a lot of shacks probably look like this, or worse. That's probably why most people don't post pictures of their shack.

Incidentally, the shack is torn down and all radio equipment removed now. I'm in the process of moving and won't have things back up for nearly two weeks. Even then, I won't have any externals antennas at the new location for a little while. Boy, moving takes a lot out of a person! I just got an Icom R-75 receiver and had only enough time to take it out of the box and press three or four buttons before putting it back away to haul it to the new house.

On the bright side, at least for a period of time the 'new' shack will look much nicer. It probably won't look much different, just cleaner.

Mike
 
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