So with the kids moving to their new home I have the office back to myself, sort of. Due to reasons, I can't remodel, repaint and rearrange the furniture until late October. Then we will vacate the office, fix the holes from the various TV mountings and repaint everything. The TV's will be remounted with better wire hiding by either wire molds painted to match or behind-the wall wiring, that is to be decided later.
In the meantime I was able to reconstruct the 10u cabinet. For the last while I had a few radios on a bookshelf alongside the desk but the wiring was messy and difficult to access, I was also limited on the amount of radios I could get to here. I decided to restrict myself to 8 scanners, this fulfilled my needs and allowed the use of a single antenna and multicoupler. In addition I bought an IC-7000 as my main ham rig replacing the IC-7300. This allows me to get into D-Star (should the local repeater restore it's gateway) down the road and allows the remote head to reside on the desktop. I thought it was an elegant solution! I kept the IC-7300 for future use as I really do like it.
In addition I have been hosting a half dozen SDR's for a friend who part-times it in the area, he has a series of SDR installations around the country. I have access to them but rarely imbibe as my interests are more towards rail, aviation and GMRS. To tell the truth I haven't listened to police radio traffic in years and only occasionally listen to fire traffic other that wildlands stuff. I do occasionally track local trunking systems but mainly to look for new talkgroups, sites and frequencies.
So on to the pictures. First, the main cabinet:
Here we have the following, top to bottom:
The cabinet resides on a 3-drawer end table that was no longer needed in the living room. I put nylon sliders under it so I can easily rotate it around to work inside the cabinet.
The SDS200's are on a 2u rack panel from Alberta Radio Supply. The 536's are on a custom made 3u panel I commissioned from NovexCom. It is simply a 3u blank with 4 DIN holes laser cut into it. The 260 and 996 are on a 2u panel from Scanner Master with 2 DIN holes.
The power supply, D578, IC-7100 and tuner are just set on the bottom of the cabinet, at least for now. I didn't have any panels to fit the power supply and this seemed like an elegant solution. I might have NovexComm make me a 3u panel for the power supply and D578 but then I would have no place to put the shelf unit and tuner so I might just leave well enough alone.
One downside to a rack cabinet like this is that it can get cramped when you start adding accessory equipment like the hubs, multicoupler etc. I found that by sliding the BC260DN out from the DIN panel it is mounted to allows me easy access to the RigRunner, so I keep a set of DIN keys handy.
Here is the desk:
On the desktop is the remote head for the IC-7100 along with the SM-50 mic I use with it. There are 2 monitors for the Windows PC I built late last year (barely visible slung under the desktop). I am currently running ProScan for logging the scanner activity. I also have ARC-536 etc. for these radios and bounce back and forth...
As for the computer... Many of you will recall that I am a huge fan of Mac's. While that hasn't changed (and I still have a maxed out MacBook Pro and an older Intel MacBook) I have bent to reality and have been using this Windows machine I built for my daily driver as well as the radio stuff. It really cleans things up by just having a single computer on the desk. I use the MacBook often for things like Zoom meetings, Facetime and content consumption away from the office and once we finish remodeling the office it will have it's own desk.
Now for the new stuff:
When the kid moved out he had to take his commercial grade networking stuff with him, he uses it for work and we piggybacked off him. I had to get my own switch and firewall as a result. Since we have 2GB fiber to the house (and could get 5GB now and 10GB soon if we wanted) I went with a Ubiquiti 16-port POE switch that accommodates 2.5 GB connections. I can add switches or access points easily when needed. We have 2 strategically placed WiFi access points and might add a third down the road as the house is pretty large and spread out. I sprung for the rack-mount kit (of course!) and mounted it with an inch of space underneath for Ethernet cables and airflow, reusing my old 4u Turret Rack.
On a ventilated rack-shelf I mounted all the SDR stuff: an Intel NUC computer, USB hub for the SDR's, 4-port multicoupler and a fan to cool the SDR's. For the fan I chose a 12v Noctua PC fan but used a 10V power supply. This allows plenty of airflow and is absolutely silent. When I ran it at 12V I could hear it even without my hearing aids. I also chose Noctua as they are well known to be quiet and reliable. I have 4 in my PC and have had no issues with them.
On top of the cabinet is my TGIF hot spot. I placed it here so I didn't have to run another Ethernet cable to the rack. I made sure to label all the Ethernet cables of course. I am thinking of getting new cables with down-facing right angles to make it even neater but the wife thinks that's crazy, even for me.
Here is a look inside the cabinet at the SDR's. I forgot to take pictures before I put it all together last week. The multicoupler uses is passive and two SDR's are connected by a splitter to a port on the multicoupler. This all helps prevent overload.
In the meantime I was able to reconstruct the 10u cabinet. For the last while I had a few radios on a bookshelf alongside the desk but the wiring was messy and difficult to access, I was also limited on the amount of radios I could get to here. I decided to restrict myself to 8 scanners, this fulfilled my needs and allowed the use of a single antenna and multicoupler. In addition I bought an IC-7000 as my main ham rig replacing the IC-7300. This allows me to get into D-Star (should the local repeater restore it's gateway) down the road and allows the remote head to reside on the desktop. I thought it was an elegant solution! I kept the IC-7300 for future use as I really do like it.
In addition I have been hosting a half dozen SDR's for a friend who part-times it in the area, he has a series of SDR installations around the country. I have access to them but rarely imbibe as my interests are more towards rail, aviation and GMRS. To tell the truth I haven't listened to police radio traffic in years and only occasionally listen to fire traffic other that wildlands stuff. I do occasionally track local trunking systems but mainly to look for new talkgroups, sites and frequencies.
So on to the pictures. First, the main cabinet:
Here we have the following, top to bottom:
- IC-705 along with the SM-30 mic I use for it. I have it residing here so I can easily take it out to the yard or park. I want to get into POTA but in the meantime this makes for a great backyard radio. Alongside is my R8600 receiver. I use the side rails to protect the knobs.
- 2 SDS200's
- 4 BCD536HP's
- BCD260DN/BCD996P2
- Anytone D-578UVIII
- LDG Z-100 Plus tuner (for the IC-7100)
- Shelf unit for the IC-7100
- Astron 50M-AP 50-amp power supply with volt and amp meters. This powers all the radios in the cabinet and allows a single switch to power off the whole shebang at night.
The cabinet resides on a 3-drawer end table that was no longer needed in the living room. I put nylon sliders under it so I can easily rotate it around to work inside the cabinet.
The SDS200's are on a 2u rack panel from Alberta Radio Supply. The 536's are on a custom made 3u panel I commissioned from NovexCom. It is simply a 3u blank with 4 DIN holes laser cut into it. The 260 and 996 are on a 2u panel from Scanner Master with 2 DIN holes.
The power supply, D578, IC-7100 and tuner are just set on the bottom of the cabinet, at least for now. I didn't have any panels to fit the power supply and this seemed like an elegant solution. I might have NovexComm make me a 3u panel for the power supply and D578 but then I would have no place to put the shelf unit and tuner so I might just leave well enough alone.
One downside to a rack cabinet like this is that it can get cramped when you start adding accessory equipment like the hubs, multicoupler etc. I found that by sliding the BC260DN out from the DIN panel it is mounted to allows me easy access to the RigRunner, so I keep a set of DIN keys handy.
Here is the desk:
On the desktop is the remote head for the IC-7100 along with the SM-50 mic I use with it. There are 2 monitors for the Windows PC I built late last year (barely visible slung under the desktop). I am currently running ProScan for logging the scanner activity. I also have ARC-536 etc. for these radios and bounce back and forth...
As for the computer... Many of you will recall that I am a huge fan of Mac's. While that hasn't changed (and I still have a maxed out MacBook Pro and an older Intel MacBook) I have bent to reality and have been using this Windows machine I built for my daily driver as well as the radio stuff. It really cleans things up by just having a single computer on the desk. I use the MacBook often for things like Zoom meetings, Facetime and content consumption away from the office and once we finish remodeling the office it will have it's own desk.
Now for the new stuff:
When the kid moved out he had to take his commercial grade networking stuff with him, he uses it for work and we piggybacked off him. I had to get my own switch and firewall as a result. Since we have 2GB fiber to the house (and could get 5GB now and 10GB soon if we wanted) I went with a Ubiquiti 16-port POE switch that accommodates 2.5 GB connections. I can add switches or access points easily when needed. We have 2 strategically placed WiFi access points and might add a third down the road as the house is pretty large and spread out. I sprung for the rack-mount kit (of course!) and mounted it with an inch of space underneath for Ethernet cables and airflow, reusing my old 4u Turret Rack.
On a ventilated rack-shelf I mounted all the SDR stuff: an Intel NUC computer, USB hub for the SDR's, 4-port multicoupler and a fan to cool the SDR's. For the fan I chose a 12v Noctua PC fan but used a 10V power supply. This allows plenty of airflow and is absolutely silent. When I ran it at 12V I could hear it even without my hearing aids. I also chose Noctua as they are well known to be quiet and reliable. I have 4 in my PC and have had no issues with them.
On top of the cabinet is my TGIF hot spot. I placed it here so I didn't have to run another Ethernet cable to the rack. I made sure to label all the Ethernet cables of course. I am thinking of getting new cables with down-facing right angles to make it even neater but the wife thinks that's crazy, even for me.
Here is a look inside the cabinet at the SDR's. I forgot to take pictures before I put it all together last week. The multicoupler uses is passive and two SDR's are connected by a splitter to a port on the multicoupler. This all helps prevent overload.
