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Re: [CQ-Contest] Desk design

To: Tom Horton <k5iid@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Desk design
From: Rick Tavan <tavan@tibco.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 20:57:20 -0700
List-post: <mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
I'm not much of a carpenter so I've always been partial to flush doors. You beg, borrow or buy two 2-drawer file cabinets and put the door on top. You make a lower shelf out of 1x12" shelving material sitting on a few 2x4's on edge. (1x14 or 1x16 would be better but is harder to find.) Screw them together if you like and countersink any screws. This gives you room for paddles, keyers, SO2R switch boxes and the like under the rigs. You can make extension wings on the sides so that outer rigs or amps can angle in toward the op. You can bracket them to the main shelf if rig weight isn't sufficient to hold it all together. Then you make an upper shelf out of the same material (1x12 should be plenty wide enough here) but tall enough to fit over the rigs and leave some ventilation clearance. The vertical supports can be the same shelving material and screws are necessary. That shelf doesn't turn out very robust unless you run an awkward brace across the back of the vertical supports, but it's fine for ATUs, antenna switch boxes, rotors, wattmeters, etc. It's really easy to throw this stuff together. The only hard part is making the vertical supports for the upper shelf - they want nice, square ends and exactly matching heights. A table saw is handy for this but it's only a few cuts so you can take the material to a friend's house if, like me, you don't have one. The one I used wasn't set up quite square so I had to do some rework anyway.

Someone remarked that elevated tuning knobs are an elbow buster. Not for me. I keep the rigs close enough that my elbows are on chair arms. At another station, I used a folded diaper as an elbow pad. I was younger then. My elbows are sturdier than my wrists which take a beating when the rig is on the desktop.

If you can keep the whole shebang a few feet out from the wall so you can get behind it, wiring is a breeze. So far I've never had room to do that, though. ;-)

I solve the monitor problem by using an IBM laptop. It has a very bright, sharp display and a good keyboard. I look DOWN at the screen, the ergonomically correct solution...says this one guy.

GL & 73,

/Rick N6XI

Tom Horton wrote:

But I am in a quandry over how to build the desk. I can't use my old station desk, so will have to build something.


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