Setting up base to tinker with mobiles.

[w9l]

I first want to say - I am no tech. What I am wanting to do is dedicate one of the workbenches in my shop for tinkering with radios. I horse trade radios quite a bit and find that a lot of the time bad solder joints or burned out bulbs are the culprit of a lot of problems. In many cases I can handle those types of repair. Can also check and get some idea of mod and power output and just do some general troubleshooting before I take things to the shop- which is nearly an hour away.

So I have a 45x60 pole barn type shop where I weld, fab, machine stuff and work on trucks in my off season. Thinking of using a good deep cycle for a power source until I come up with something better. I can easily mount a mobile antenna like a predator 10k or K40 trucker6000 up on my roof in the middle or on the south end. But to get to my workbench I am thinking it is gonna take 30 to50 ft of coax. What kind should I use and is length a problem? Can I use a double male 259 to splice 2 18 ft pre made pieces together?

Later I might step up to a solarcon or something and try harder for skip. My place is near to subdivisions so not sure I want to make myself to obvious. Any suggestions? Just trying to work with what I have lying about at the moment. I have some wilson 2000's and firestick 2 around here as well. My shop is all metal skinnned btw With any of the four ft mobile antennas the tip will be around 20-22 ft in the air.

[Blue Ox2]

Hi w9l,

I think you can certainly put together the items you are mentioning to get
a radio on the air from the barn.

I think as your time marches on and you become happier, and more
involved in your hobby from the barn, you will want to have a Base station radio,
a bigger antenna, mounted higher, and using a better coax like RG8 in a single length.

There are lots of great rigs out there, as I am sure you are aware.

Take yer time, enjoy the journey and we'll be looking forward to your
continued involvement.

73,

Mike

[MDYoungblood]

Setting up a bench for radios isn't all that, a good meter, a multi-meter, a power supply that will handle whatever you want to work on, and as you get better and more confident, an oscilloscope, frequency generator, tone generator, etc. can but looked for.
The question on coax is below 30mhz using barrel connectors and PL259's don't make the coax too lossy but I'd keep them to a minimum.
Antenna wise check out some homemade stuff, a T2TL or a vertical Bazooka, easy to make and would be a lot better than a mobile antenna, do a search on the internet, you will be surprised at what can be made with stuff laying around the barn.

3's

Greg