The items on the this page (apart from the Kenwood) have long since disappeared from the shack.
Kenwood TM-271 2mtr Transceiver
Very compact 2m mobile transceiver. Rated at 60 watts output, but heatsinking is more appropriate for a 25 w rig. i.e. it runs very hot at full power! Quite sensitive and meets my very limited needs.
2m activity is pretty minimal in this part of the world. It gets turned on from time to time, cycling through some simplex channels and the local repeater. Apart from the repeater ID it can spend days without the squelch being disturbed.
Used for communicating with local radio amateurs since range at VHF is more or less restricted to line of sight, although in certain favourable conditions the range can increase dramatically.
This equipment is now about 15 years old (very dated) and was intended primarily for mobile use. Capable of about 30 watts output despite its small size it was probably quite state of the art in its day and received excellent reviews when first introduced. I'm looking for a legitimate excuse to get something more modern but it refuses to expire.
The RX2 was designed by a team led by Ray Godden as a low cost 137 MHz receiver for the reception of weather satellite images. Continuously scans up to 5 channels. It is only available as a kit to members of the Remote Imaging Group. This project has been hugely successful with over 1500 kits sold to date. Costing only £55 its performance is on a par with the most expensive commercial receivers. Case, connectors, S-meter and power supply are not supplied in the kit. A completed PCB is shown in the upper photograph.
The lower photograph shows one that I built about six years ago.
This is the receiver which I use regularly for satellite image reception. Sensitivity is sufficient to get excellent images without the use of a pre-amplifier. It is marginally superior to the RX2 and I purchased it before the RX2 was introduced otherwise the expense would not have been justified. Switch it on and forget about it.