Here you can see some pictures of my "Shack" at my home in the area called Unterland. You can find pictures of my other locations on the respective pages. "Shack", that's how we radio amateurs call our room with the radio equipment such as transceivers for various operations modes like ATV, FAX, SSTV, FM, SSB, satellite communication and Packet Radio. Radio amateurs have the privilege to build their equipment (e.g. receivers, transmitters, amplifiers and antennas) on their own. To test these devices I have acquired over time quite some test equipment.

Amateur Television (ATV) was one of the operating modes I like most. I used to build most of my equipment myself. Shown in the photograph below is my home-brew FM-ATV dual band transmitter (for the 1.2 and 2.4 GHz bands).

During the operation via my local ATV-repeater DB0PE I received the ATV signal at 1.2 GHz using a long Yagi and transmitted my live video ATV signal at 2.4 GHz using a segment dish antenna from Connifer. To allow full-duplex operation the repeater featured an additional 435MHz voice input. I used one of my omni-directional multi-band stacked ground-plane antennas for this input. Unfortunately DB0PE is no more operational in ATV and thus I have presently no more opportunity to operate ATV.

In the pictures above you can see my present VHF/UHF/SHF antennas which are all omni-directional aerials

Today people can use a simple Internet connection to talk to friends all over the world almost free of charge. However I think that it is still fascinating to use the HF bands with their specific propagation characteristics. On the picture to the right you see a part of my antenna system for the HF bands. The antennas are mounted on a mast which can be rotated 360°. The rotary dipoles are an FB-13 (for 10m, 15m, 20m) and an UFB-12 (for 12m and 17m). On top is a 4 element yagi antenna for the 6m magic band. I use the 3-band dipole also to receive the russian satellites with HF downlinks. For the 40m and 80m bands I use a W3DZZ wire dipole which can partly be seen on the picture. My transceiver is an ICOM IC-7700.
I am not very active on the shortwave bands but if you are interested I will be happy to arrange a sked.

Sometimes I am also using repeaters here in the area. Most of them are for voice but some are also for Packet Radio or ATV. If you want to contact me you can see in the table below, which repeaters I can access from my home and in which of the various operating modes.

10m FM repeater
 

2m FM repeater
 

70cm FM repeater
 

23cm FM repeater
 

ATV repeater
 

Multimode repeater
 

Packet Radio digipeater
 

The next map shows the location of most of the above listed repeaters with reference to my own location. This map was generated using the excellent Freeware program "Radiomobile". Please note that the full resolution map which you get when clicking on the picture below is 3 MBytes large and the download may take some time.
 

If you are not in my area and thus cannot reach me directly or via one of the repeaters listed above we could also try to get in contact using "Echolink". This is a technology which links amateur radio repeaters via the Internet and thus allows worldwide contacts. In addition it also provides the possibility to access the repeaters from any PC with a Internet connection. Access is only available for radio amateurs holding a valid license. My node numbers are 63949 for my callsign DD1US and 518482 when operating my simplex Echolink gateway.

Usually when I am traveling with my car I operate my APRS station with the callsign DD1US-9, which transmits on VHF (144.800 MHz). Thus you can check the status when monitoring the APRS network. If you do not have an APRS station yourself you can also check my status in the internet at www.aprs.fi. You can also simply click on the little map to the left. If I am operating my portable station then I use the callsign DD1US-7. Therefore you might want to check this callsign too.