Who says hams don’t build equipment anymore? Randy Henderson, WI5W, of Oklahoma City not only built every piece of equipment in his station – including the microphone – he designed it all, too!

The centerpiece of Randy’s station is at the bottom right of our cover photo – a 9-band, synthesized, microprocessor-controlled HF transceiver that boasts many of the features normally found only on commercially-built gear. For example, his rig operates SSB or CW, has 14 tunable memories, will operate split frequency for those 40-meter DX contacts, displays frequency and mode and even has a diagnostic mode that lets you check on some of the internally-generated frequencies. Its power output is variable from less than one watt to 50 watts.

Between Randy and the transceiver is more homebrew gear – an 800-watt tube-type amplifier on the table that also covers the nine HF bands, and a multiband solid-state CW transmitter on top of the amp, which Randy says saw more use before he built the transceiver. And yes, there is a mic in Randy’s hand (no, he’s not talking to his hand) – it’s a noise-canceling electret mic that he built into an old pill bottle!

In ham radio’s truest tradition, Randy has shared his plans for the transceiver in a book he’s written, titled, Build Your Own Intelligent Amateur Radio Transceiver (ISBN # 0-07-028264-1(p) ). It’s published by McGraw-Hill and is available from most major bookstores, including Amazon.com. Randy says designing and building gear is “a way to keep my interest up. If I lose interest in operating for a while, there’s always another project to build.” (Cover photo by Larry Mulvehill, WB2ZPI)