How come it's such a damn mess - again?

Well,

I have a new toy; it's a Yaesu FT-2000 and it arrived yesterday. My mate Vince, G0ORC, has been round already to help me set it up and flash the firmware to the latest versions. So far this new addition feels very much like a "proper" radio.

After having a rather serious shuffle of the kit in the shack, here's how I've managed to fit this new baby in:

So, to accommodate the new rig and interface it to the PC's and digital modes I've just been modifying the digital mode interface I made only a few weeks ago. The main mod is to change a two way switch to a three and include the switching for a third radio. My other criticism of my project was the case - I bought the case from Maplin, but because it was so totally pants, every time I connected anything to the back of the box the rear panel collapsed into the case - useless! After all the time I spent drilling and making holes for all the sockets this was, at best, disappointing. So here's the basic same project but re-boxed and with a third radio interface:

But as with me under these kind of circumstances, it's only taken about an hour to drill the new case and move the contents accross, but I've done all the drilling inside the shack and somehow the place is now a total disaster area:

What happened I hear you cry - it's tidy up time now...

A few things to do this weekend, firstly it's the CQWW HF contest which means that the non WARC HF bands are going to be rammed; most excellent for playing with a new radio! But on Sunday the plan is to try and take down the V/UHF antennas from here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.com/2011/10/eventually-we-have-some-progress.html?m=0

And also the HF rotary antenna that I have, which I installed here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-whats-it-like-then.html?m=0

Has stopped rotating! This is probably due to the fact that it's a super cheap antenna rotator. But whatever the cause it is going to involved working at some great hight that I'm not going to like one little bit.

Here's the obligatory cat photo:

Good, egh?