Q: What's inside the N6RO shack?

A: Lots of equipment and operators!

California QSO Party Action

This is an example of a full house, when several bands and two modes are active simultaneously. This demonstrates our full multi-multi capability.

Operating like this is a blast, a real team sport with advice and comments flying around the room.

Floor Plan

There are basically six operating positions arranged in a horseshoe. Each position consists of a radio, amplifier, and computer system.

Station 5 also contains all the VHF/UHF equipment, which is only used for contests on those specific bands, or for casual operating.

A Look at the Stations

Radios are currently Flex 6600 or Elecraft K3, plus an Icom 9700 for VHF/UHF. HF stations are normally configured to operate remotely as well as locally. Flex-based stations are fully SO2R capable. Every station has its own amplifier (PGXL, KPA1500, Alpha, Ameritron, or ACOM).

Antenna Switching

Multiple antennas fed by multiple stations requires a complex switching system. Ours was custom-built by NA6O and implements a crossbar switch where any transceiver can access any of the primary antennas on 6 bands (160 thru 10m).

All switches are accessible from a computer GUI to support remote operation.

Switching Concept

Switches on the left of this diagram appear in the previous photo. They operate in a static fashion to determine which station has access to a given band. On the right are band-select switches driven by the radio via a band decoder. When the operator switches bands the radio automatically and dynamically is routed to the correct antenna. Each station has its own band-select switch.

Full details are on the Technical page.

Diagram of RF connections

Crammed into one diagram, here are all the antennas routed to all the stations. How many antennas do you see?