HF

For HF work I will be using a Yaesu FT-817ND - output is 5W and will feed into an end fed long wire. I also have a Yaesu FT-690R for 6m

VHF / UHF

For VHF / UHF work I am using a Yaesu FT-817ND (output is 5W into a 2m/70cm dual band colinear), and for portable work a Yaesu FT-290R, Yaesu FT690R or a Yaesu FT-790R (oldies but goodies!) and another Baofeng UV-5R.

I also have a Microwave Modules 30W linear amplifier that I use for 2m portable operation (predominantly with the FT-290R).

SSTV / RTTY

I am using one of my UV-5Rs with MMSSTV on 2m and 70cm, and will use the FT-817ND with MMTTY software on HF. Just a pity there seems to be so little SSTV/RTTY activity these days!

HF / VHF Reception

I am using a Realtek RTL2832U dongle modified to receive down to 100kHz with HDSDR software and an external compact active antenna.

APRS / iGate / WSPR

I use another UV-5R on 2m with a Mobilinkd TNC as an iGate for APRS and will be building and using a QRP Labs Ultimate 3S for WSPR on HF. Antenna used for the iGate is a dual band 2m/70cm whip - the Ultimate 3S will eventually use an end fed long wire.

ADS-B and Airband

I am using an RTL-SDR RTL2832U dongle on my Linux server (a re-appropriated HP Proliant Microserver with a 1Tb RAID-5 array and 8Gb RAM and running Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS) with RTL1090 backend and PiAware and MM2 software. Antenna is a 1090 Mhz vertical colinear with Uputronics preamplifier. Antenna is mounted approximately 3m AGL.

For airband reception I am using an old Realistic Pro-2006 scanner with audio recording carried out when required on the Toshiba netbook. The antenna is an internal Slim-G.

Weather and Weather Satellites

I have a dedicated weather station (an unbadged Fine Offset model) which uploads realtime data to my website using Cumulus MX software. The weather feed is also ported to APRS.FI, CWOP, WeatherCloud and Met Office WOW websites. I also have a weather cam online 24 hours a day, pointing to the West of my QTH. The cam is wireless and I have been experiencing problems with signal strength, so I have run a CAT-6 cable to the cam to resolve this issue.

For weather satellite reception I am using another RTL-SDR dongle. Signal processing is carried out using APTDecoder software on an old WinXP netbook (a re-appropriated Toshiba NB500) feeding images to my website, and the antenna is a horizontal V-dipole with masthead preamp mounted approximately 4m AGL.

Although I have sorted the hardware side of things, I haven't as yet set up the SFTP script to enable the transfer of the images to my website - I hope to get this sorted in the next few weeks.