The current station

Mostly I am active on 6m QRP FT8 and 10m QRP WSPR with my beacon (which is out of shot). The photo shows my current setup.

1970s station

Looking back I came across this photo that must be well over 40 years ago. It shows my station in the 1970s. 

It also shows the EC10 receiver and my Liner-2 2m SSB transceiver. 

My son looks very young (under 2?). Judging by my son I would date this to the very late 1970s.

Station rationalisation

At the moment my main activities are 6m and 10m FT8, 2m and 70cm SSB in the UKAC activity sessions, 2m FM in the local net and 10m QRP  WSPR with my W5OLF beacon.  

It occurred to me that all could be done with the IC-705, although the stand-alone 10m WSPR beacon (500mW) is useful when I am on 6m FT8.

So, for now, I have rationalised my set-up.

My 1990s station ...and clearing out

Whilst sorting through my collection of SPRAT magazines to give to a local amateur G4NUA - I recently bought the SPRATbook and have most on DVD - I came across this photo inside one of them. It must have been taken around 1992 I think and shows the amateur radio station I had then. What is interesting  is that I actually had a 100W radio (FT747) at that time, although it was hardly ever used at that power because of the problems with RF feedback into the rig. The shack then consisted of a table by the window in our main bedroom. My wife must have been very tolerant!

The 10m Lincoln President, derived from a CB radio, was actually a very nice radio: I recall working mobile with it and having a solid SSB QSO with a station in India early one evening around the 1990 solar maximum whilst driving near Cambridge. It was sold long ago though. The little Mizuho MX2 (I still have one) was used to drive a 10m transverter and I worked plenty of 10m DX with it and around 1W pep to a vertical CB halfwave. The Standard handheld rigs came from my workplace: at one time we were considering OEM-in of PMR radios from Standard (before they joined with Yaesu)  and one of my colleagues got a pile of samples on a trip to Japan. Guess who got some of them after they had been "evaluated"? In the end we got some portable PMR radios from a source in South Korea and that was a disaster.

Today I have far fewer transceivers - all QRP - but get just as much fun. There are no homebrew rigs in this 1990s picture although I did have some. Today quite a lot of my kit is home made, although not all rigs remain in their cases for too long as I tend to note the schematic and take a few photos, then reuse parts and enclosures.