Ham Radio Shack 2.0
So a couple weeks ago I got up from my computer desk to go to bed and noticed the shelves above my radio desk looked bowed. I initially though my eyes were playing tricks on me, because they couldn’t bow and still have the brackets in the wall. Upon further investigation I discovered that the center bracket had started coming out of the wall, when I noticed it the bracket was about a 1/2 inch out of the wall.
So I quickly yanked everything off the shelves, which was actually quite a bunch of stuff. I did a postmortem on the installation of the shelves, I found my mistake. (I actually built the shelves myself, sort of custom install for the space) I had used 1.5inch screws to attach the brackets to the wall, but I didn’t account for the fact that the brackets takes up about an inch of the screw. So there was just not enough screw in the wall for all the weight.
The next day I took a look at the desk and decided that I might as well yank everything off the desk since I had already pulled 2/3rds. The benefit is that I get to put the desk back together with a little more insight into how it will be used, before it just sort of “grew” into the current configuration. I was really having a hard time figure out cables, all the coax runs were twisted together and in general it was a mess.
So improvement number 1 was adding another bracket to hold the shelves up. It should enable the shelves to hold more weight, when combined with the 3inch screws I used to re-attach all the brackets.
Improvement number 2 was mounting the power strip on the wall, a foot or so above the ground. I also mounted the 12v rig runner strip even farther up the wall. (This is how I power all the radios) These two things moved off the ground will make a huge difference to the cable mess. Simple to-do, don’t know why I didn’t do it before.
Improvement number 3 I’m not so sure about, but decided to-do it anyhow. About half the runs of coax into the house were for the HF radios, which all ran to a coax switch. I’ve always seen these set ups in the fancy shacks where the coax switch was mounted to the wall, close to where the coax came into the shack, so there was only a single coax run to the HF radios. So I mounted my coax switch to the wall, right above where all the coax comes into the house.
I have started putting stuff back together, but stopped because I still don’t have a tray installed under the desk. I’m hoping by putting one of those cord trays under the desk, that I can keep most of the rest of the mess off the floor. I have had a problem finding one that I like, but supposedly Ikea has one. I just haven’t gotten down there yet.