Care to share your shack pics?

Let's see if I can attach a picture link.
Shack. It's not the latest picture but it's pretty close. I've added a backup rig (IC-7300) and rearranged a few things. Primary rig is a Yaesu FTDX-3000d. Acom-1000 HF and 6m amplifier (about 1200 Watts). The shack is located remotely, about 100 yards from the house. Noise levels are very low back there.
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Antenna. 40-10m Yagi at 75ft above ground:
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I got my General and Technician license a couple years ago. I’ve yet to make a transmission or take the time to learn my cheap radio. If I ever did get on the air, what would I expect to hear folks talk about?

Medical problems.

Their daily doins.

Sometimes politics.

Pile ups when people are after DX.
 
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Who knows, old guys talking about their health, people talking about the weather, people telling you your audio is terrible and exactly what settings to adjust. Lots of contests and “on the air events”. Dx refers to long distance out of the country stations, Dx=distance. A pileup is when a ton of people are calling one station. Imagine a whole stadium of people saying their callsign all at once.
 
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Don’t know what this means. :(
DX means long distance. Typically far away or hard to get countries or something unique. Occasionally groups will quest to a place like the Galápagos Islands and set up a temporary station. One time they set up a station on the NS Savannah docked in Baltimore and gave it a special call sign.

A pile up is when several people try to reach a station all at the same time. Field day is a good example, especially with an XYL (female) operator. I spent some time making contacts for fun on Field day last summer from my parents front porch. Got through the pile ups pretty well, but I’ve tuned the filters on my radio to put the audio power (different than RF power) in the voice band.
 
Old men talking about their pills and what they had for lunch. About like this place.

Here's some things I do with ham radio:
1. Transmit Emails and Text Messages to any place on earth, via HF radio, particularly if I need to get a message to my parents or friends or business partners regarding my status during hurricanes, weather events - or just for fun.
2. Bounce my 2 meter radio signal off the ISS as it flies overhead and talk to other HAMs across the county (cause the ISS has a voice repeater on it) or talk to the Astronauts themselves.
3. Have a conversation with people all across the planet whether it be voice communication or digital chat (similar to text messages).
4. Provide support services to our county in the event that significant power outages occur and set up a network of radios so emergency managers can communicate with the EOC in Raleigh or any other EOC as needed.
5. Set up a mesh radio network on 2.4 Ghz using Linksys routers and do video and audio chat or send documents all within its own private (non-public) network... self standing without outside internet services.
6. Send images of anything over HF to other Hams - particularly handy in the event you need to describe conditions of weather events or, as they say, pic is worth a thousand words.
7. Bounce your signal off the moon and make a CW contact with another Ham operator another country. (EME Earth Moon Earth).
8. Participate in county emergency simulations and be a part of something bigger than ourselves - help others in disasters (ie., Puerto Rico Hurricane).... get messages from stateside to folks looking for family members in PR.
9. Learn Morse Code .. - ... .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -.-- -.-. --- --- .-..
10. Build your own antennas (dipoles are easy).
11. Help the boy scouts get their merit badges for radio communications.
12. Plot your position on a APRS map and send messages from your vehicle - and its NOT texting violation. :)
13. Do a Summit On the Air (SOTA) mountain activation - climbing a mountain and make contacts w/ others on mountains.
14. Join a local Ham, ARES, Auxcomm club in your county and learn about the freedom of having your own communication system - especially if or when it goes dark....
15. Help your neighbors get a message to their families if disaster hits - ie., tornado.
16. Learn about radio waves, solar weather which has a large effect on radio propagation and subsequently earth quakes, electronics, and share your knowledge with others who find radio communication fascinating (which the history of radio development itself is interesting to learn about).
17. And as to the comment about old men talking about their pills or what they had for lunch, just remember - they may be home bound, disabled and without a spouse living any longer and the only means of communication they have is with others on the air - friends, people they can actually TALK with as opposed to using texting some stranger on Social Media.
 
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Well, I got a bit of frustration with my lack of space for my ham shack stuff, so I built a table, hung some monitors and now it’s an Intel center....oh the fun stuff I do now! I do more “monitoring” of information now than transmitting. I use a lot of RSS feeds into my station (email), get live news around the world, you’d be surprised how much intel is out there just using RSS feeds... I pull satellite images from NOAA out of Boston MA, Email and texting via ham radio.... track aircraft (without internet) flying with my own ADSB Receiver and homemade 1090 MHz antenna and can ID if they are commercial or military spy planes.... not to mention HF and VHF/UHF comms. Also running Dstar, Fusion, and DMR on hotspots for world wide comms, 2 scanners covering 5 counties, mil air, and the State Viper network, 2 fire sticks for news broadcasts live, and OTA TV for local news (roughly 48 channels OTA), Oh, I have 12v battery back up ... just in case. So here’s the NEW intel center....

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