The AM Forum

Upon the strong urging of K4SMN, I finally had to do something about the nice, freestanding rack I purchased from a local ham about 9 months ago (it was taking up space in the garage). Today, I cleaned the rack up with a drill-mounted wire brush, pressure washed, and finally applied black paint. The rack is now upstairs in the Shack O' Doom/Mad Scientist Lab with the aid of my daughter and her beau. The rack takes up a lot more space in here than I thought, so I will have to rethink the arrangement of items and sundries.

Does this mean my boatanchor / AM malady is moving on beyond the incubation period?

:)

Philip KA4KOE

Wasn't life so simple, when "what a nice rack" meant only ONE (two) things..

Nice rack there Philip!

Welcome to the addiction..  ;)

   It's an illness, your only salvation is that your shack is on the second floor, that limits the weight the floor can bear. Now if you relocate the shack to the garage where you have a solid floor you are for sure in deep poo poo.

To borrow a phrase from Alice Cooper, welcome to my nightmare.

I am proud of your activity Philip, you said these magic words:

Rack
Doom
Lab

and this means you are on your way. Especially if your daughter's beau is of the kind that helps move stuff. That is half way to an apprentice. Heed the comments about the floor. Perhaps you can negotiate a swap to a more solid floored space. If not, maybe lay two 4x12's down and shim them to distribute weight. just saying.

There are some little rack-screw-hole-area polishing tools too, that fit a drill and a blunted tip slips into the threaded hole while a 1/2" diameter face wire-brushes the surrounding rail-metal for a clean ground from panel to rail. What are those things called?

NBC: - Those comments on nice rack, two things yes, - the equipment cabinet, and the protrusions on horny wild animals that guys like to hunt.

That's why my shack is the basement.  Can't overload the concrete floor that I put in myself; without trying really hard anyway.  My theory now is if I can't get it down into the basement, I don't need it that badly.

Yes...A nice plate of ribs, smothered in Memphis-style barbecue sauce! Now get your mind out of the gutter.

The other Phil,
K2PG

I have a great fiend, er friend, whom I gave pointers to help pass her Registered Architect Exams, electrical portion. Need to make time to have her and her hubby over so she can look at the studs holding the shack against the inexorable pull of 1G.....so all hope is not lost.

Right now I am typing this and wishing I was wearing a respirator....the pungent volatile organic compounds in the paint pigments are still strong. Last night, had to crack a winder so K4SMN

http://www.qrz.com/db/K4SMN

and I could stay in the room...

Paint fumes........hmmmmm

Used auto undercoat paint in an aerosol can....hey its what was handy. Looks pretty good.

Philip

  There is always Boat Anchors Anonymous....

  Hello, I'm Philip, KA4KOE, I started collecting Boat Anchors......

Here it is in all its glory...

all you need now with those big holes up top is a 6000-series VAX blower laid over one. silent at 12V and moves a ton of air. Or hang it inside and pressurize the rack making it exhaust at the bottom, so as to not suck in dust bunnies (a DEC microvax trick)., well OK it has no sides so you have no cooling problems there.  Anyway that's a real keeper there! Big modulator in the bottom of the rack already! I'm happy for you!

Your daughter needs to keep that boyfriend !

It has the sides. They're still in the garage needing paint.

If it were mine, it would be a good news, bad news rack.  The good news is it wouldn't fall over if I put the heaviest thing on top (duh!).  The bad news, is that I'd probably trip over those feet every time I walked by (doh!!).

Bolting it to the floor is always possible if tippin's an issue and those feet are troublesome. Lag bolts work good on a wood floor unless the XYL finds out.

for those with no carpet and just exposed wood flooring, slip a piece of 1/4" thick aluminum, with the same width and depth footprint as the rack and its front anti-tip feet, under the bottom of the rack.
The aluminum having four appropriately threaded 3/8 or 1/2" holes for short bolts that pass through the rack base, and then use washers to shim up the bolt heads inside the bottom of the rack and keep the bolt threads from going through the aluminum and touching the floor.
A bit of carpet can be glued to the underside of the aluminum plate so it can all slide on the wood floor harmlessly.

Started loading stuff into it. Sheri K4SMN tells me it needs moving as I am blocking the winder in the upstairs Mad Scientist Lab/Shack O' Doom.

Philip

Keep filling that rack up Philip. One of the nice things is that going vertical allows you to add much more big stuff into your station with no sacrifice of valuable bench space!

Last night on 160 meters after I signed off with Rich, Joe, Tim and Chet the mess on my workbench inspired me to put away some of the stuff I had been working on earlier. The receiver was still on so I was listening and thought I heard you throw your call in. If that was you, the signal strength was fine up here in New England but I think you may have doubled with someone and so you were not heard. Conditions were not spectacular but if that was your station it sounds like you have a good RF "footprint" into the northeast on 160 meters.

Rob W1AEX

Do yourself a favor, before loading the rack up, make some side rails (angle alluminum) to support the weight of the boat anchors so you can slide things in and out.

I went for years man-handling big stuff into racks before I took the time to make supports.

Got side rails!

Getting there. Shux, Almost half full.

Philip