New Operating Desk

Widely spaced blog articles are due to me being very busy and a lot of partially complete projects that are not ready to become blog material. I was sitting in my easy chair one evening, utterly fatigued, and looked around the shack. I realized that I had not yet mentioned the new operating desk that I put into service in late August. I'll remedy that oversight now.

The previous iteration of operating desk did not work out well. It was the product of ideas not fully worked out, my horrible carpentry skills and a few unfortunate design choices. I ripped it out of the shack and made another attempt. What I learned from my mistakes led me to an improved design. Now that it's been in use for a few weeks it is worth a look.

First, I will state the obvious: it is not complete. I continue to work on placement of the equipment and cable routing. The second (right) radio is installed but not connected. Desk setup is improving, slowly, and it will be a keeper for a year or two at least. My objectives for the design include:

• Ergonomic improvements for SO2R contests
• Rapid rearrangement for two operating positions in multi-op contests
• Keeping the mess of cables out of sight, especially those for the station automation system
• Convenient access to the back panels and cables for service and configuration changes
• Improved appearance
• Space to place infrequently or never touched equipment out of sight
• Lots of legroom without the risk of knees and shins bumping into the desk structure
  
• Support heavy equipment, especially amplifiers
  

I was unhappy with reasonably priced commercial products that met my objectives. Monitoring the local used markets found many inexpensive office desks, but all had at least one fatal flaw. Maybe one would have appeared had I waited but with contest season approaching I had to act.

A friend with a truck brought a 4' × 8' × ¾" sheet of fir plywood to his workshop where we ripped it to a 30" depth and routed the edges. The remaining 8' x 18" of the sheet was set aside for shelves that will be built later (more on this below).

He delivered the plywood to my workshop where I stained it and put on several coats of polyurethane. I kept most of the frame of the previous desk, discarding the desktop and beefing up the structure so that it is very stable and capable of supporting a heavy load. I put them together and positioned the new desk next to my (non-ham) desk to form an L. I was careful to make the desktops the same height.

My old 1980s operating desk, which I revived almost 10 years ago, has the same fir plywood top but it was not suitable. Too much space was taken by a set of drawers and the vertical side supports, and it is a foot shorter than the original 8' sheet size. Although perfectly good for SO2R, it is inadequate for two operators.

The desktop height must be identical to that of the adjacent desk. I got it right but it still wasn't good enough. At 8', the desk is so long there is a small sag even with a stiff frame. But the level match is very close, less than ¼" of sag at the interior corner. The keyboard wobbles a bit when it lies across the boundary, which is where it will be for SO2R with two keyboards. The pointy right front edge of the left desktop is exposed and can catch unwary fingers.

The horizontal lumber of the frame is rearward to take the weight of the equipment while staying beyond reach of the operator's knees. Addressing the sag with a forward beam isn't possible. However a mid-span vertical support can work. I will experiment to find one that removes the sag and doesn't limit the excellent legroom.

The operating desk was designed to be functional and not pretty. The frame is the lumber equivalent of "plumber's delight" yagi construction. Metal stiffening plates are placed where they are most effective and the projecting screws are out of the way of operator's legs and feet. Some are visible when you enter the shack but I don't worry about that. Power bars are mounted to the back of the frame's rear beam.

The lower equipment shelves support power supplies and the station automation hardware. Other "low touch" equipment will be added later. Eventually the BPF (band pass filters) will move below the desk since band switching is automatic. The station automation hardware (pix) is in the back corner close to the floor opening for the cables. The computer is at the back corner of the desktop just above it. That choice keeps the multitude of Cat5 control cables from snaking across the floor or having to be dressed along the underside of the desk. You can see excess blue plenum cables hanging from a hook. 

I can hardly wait for a full wireless control system so I can dispense with control cables entirely. The same aspiration applies to transceivers; I want all communication between rigs and computers to be wireless. We're getting closer but we're not there yet. There are so many cables that a tangled mess is difficult to avoid no matter how careful you are.

I kept a gap between the desk and wall to ease service. No more crawling under (or over) the desk to access equipment rear panels and cables. The aesthetics are not great, but at 14" (35 cm) the appearance is acceptable. That may seem too narrow unless you've met me in person; I am exceptionally slim (skinny). Keeping the space narrow may dissuade guest ops from the temptation to venture where they probably should not.

In the picture at the top of the article you can see a variety of rotator controllers. One recent change was to replace the old Ham-M controller with a newer Hy-Gain model. They frequently appear at flea markets for a reasonable price after the accompanying rotator dies. Two of them make a convenient support for the computer monitor. I may need more (there's another on the far right of the desk) when I modernize the home brew breadboard prop pitch controller sitting on top of the FTdx5000. Visitors are always startled to see that monstrosity, yet it continues to work very well.

Eventually I will use the leftover plywood to make a prettier corner shelving unit to give the monitor a proper support and to avoid direct stacking of equipment. Amplifiers are dangerous to stack because they are heavy -- the Drake L7 is an exception because the power supply is in a separate enclosure. The extra shelves will wait until I replace the FTdx5000 with a modern rig since it is quite large and won't fit the shelf design.

The walls of the shack are bare. Not only do I not apply for awards, I have never put contest plaques on the wall. For that matter, my framed university degrees have also never been hung on a wall. The shack walls are more bare than before because I removed a bookcase to make room for the longer desk. Maybe this is an opportunity to dust off the plaques and cover the empty walls. Maybe.

Since I'm pretty happy with new desk I will continue with station setup and get it ready for the fall DX and contest season. I will tinker with it this winter as time allows. Right now I have a long list of higher priority outdoor projects to complete.