I have hopefully finished battering the credit card (well for now), and have the radio and ancillaries, the next purchase will be the external aerial, but I will do another page on that.

I decided on a Kenwood TS-2000 multi-band transceiver as this will give me all the flexibility I believe I require, this is powered by a EP-925 PSU with an output current of 25A and a peak of 30A. All the reviews on this power supply were right in that it is really noisy when the cooling fan kicks in, I have done the mod which is all over the internet and is simply a 1.5K resistor in series with the thermostat, this ‘fools’ the cooling fan circuit and has the fan running at a very low speed all the time, should the thermostat open due to high temperature, the fan will go to full speed and full cooling.

I also bought a Signalink mainly in preparation for PSK31 when I get the aerial sorted, I will also explore all other data modes when I get the chance, the Signalink is configure to Radio Ham Deluxe program and works really well, again I copied others in downloading Skype so I can remote into the TS-2000 from a laptop, currently my license allows me to do this only from within the house as it is still classed as being attended, a full license holder can use this in remote mode away from the house.

I imported a MFJ-949E Antenna Matching Unit, this is not connected to anything yet, but looks nice 🙂