Also to note, I decided to rewire the inside portion of the shack and upgrade from RG-8x to RG-8u and also a quad Alpha-Delta switch. You can still see the existing 8x runs out to the outdoor grounding system, of which also feeds 8x up to the antennas. Only 200 feet of cable to replace… at $1.45/foot. Yikes.
The switch on the left selects either antenna (beam or vertical) or dummy load. The switch on the right selects the radio, either the Icom or the Heathkit.
Laurie’s 1967 Heathkit SB-301 has a better recieve than my Icom 746? Unreal how this thing hears! Over the course of the last few days, we’ve worked Italy, Ireland and Estonia with the vintage rig. Yes I’m officially jealous that she has a better radio than me. But I’m saving up for 2 investments, Either a Yaesu FT2000 or a Ten-Tec Omni VII. Eventually I will buy a vintage Drake B Series.
In the process of rewiring the shack to facilitate additional radios I had found my new MFJ wattmeter had a loose rattle inside. Come to find one of the plastic prongs holding the actually meter broke off. How!? I’ve been nothing but careful with it and have never pushed or touched the actual meter face.
And then…. I added a new Ameritron wet dummy load (the paint can type), and found that the parts used to hold the 50 ohm resistor in place was shorting the center pin to shield. Wow, great. after a little engineering and removing the “cage” from the resistor enclosure, the dummy short was finally a dummy load.
Is this the kind of stuff I’m going to have to worry about when I got to buy my 811h and MFJ auto tuner?
