Project “GoBox” is go!
My home shack setup is as good as it can be given that my antenna is somewhat compromised in terms of location between a building and an earth bank topped with trees and bushes. At the same time I’m located in an urban setting so lots of background QRN/QRM to contend with.
The logical expansion of my home shack is to look at taking a radio “portable” and that means building a “gobox”. For anyone who is not sure what a gobox is, it’s some sort of case or box with everything mounted inside so you can just pick it up, set off and you know you have everything you need to get on the air. I was going to make this a project for next year but thanks to a nice little tax refund from HMRC I now have funding to get the project up and running this year.
The key item in the gobox is obviously the radio and it has been a difficult decision to come to. I was looking at 3 radios all from Yaesu. The FT-710, the FT-991a and the FTdx10. The FT-710 was a good choice because it’s small, low cost and has excellent reviews and at the low cost (£849 for the field version) I could have picked up a brand spanking new one which is always nice. My second choice was the FT-991a. Another excellent radio and with the addition of 2m and 70cm so a full “shack in a box”. But I just don’t like the look of the FT-991a, to me it looks quite dated (because it is). And finally, there is the FTdx10. Truth be said, not really a portable radio because it’s quite a large base station. But I have long been a fan of this radio and I’m sure that if I didn’t have the FTdx101MP in my shack I would have had the FTdx10 instead.
So, yesterday I called the greatest toyshop in the land ML&S and put a £50 deposit down on a very tidy used FXdx10 which next this week I’ll go fetch. At the same time I’m down there I will pick up a few other items to build the gobox like a 240v PSU, a Yaesu MLS-200 external speaker, an SWR meter and an antenna,
Now, the antenna is something I’m having to put a LOT of thought into. There are many and varied types of portable antennas but most of them either work on a single band or need constant adjustments to maintain a workable SWR to work multi bands. Because of my disabilities I would like to avoid the need to keep attending to the antenna so that rules out most of the options on the market
My first plan therefore was to use a 12.5 meter fiberglass telescopic pole and string up a nice long random wire attached to a mAT ATU via a 9:1 unun and then to the radio. This would work very well and is a type of antenna I’ve used before with excellent results. Only problem is the setting up of something so large. So, last night I hatched out plan B, which is the used a ground mounted Yaesu ATAS-120a. This fits all my needs, multi-band (40m-10m), controlled via the radio so no need for an external ATU and small so I can stick it up and take it down on my own with minimum of problems. Priced at £319 it’s not the cheapest option but once I’ve put all the parts together for a random wire there isn’t going to be any real difference.