{"id":4847,"date":"2011-03-10T10:28:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T23:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/03\/10\/the-hobbit-hole\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T17:56:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T07:56:04","slug":"the-hobbit-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/03\/10\/the-hobbit-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hobbit Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the interest of preserving what I suspect will become an important piece of amateur radio history, I’m posting some pictures of the underground radio shack and workshop of Michael, AA1TJ.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Michael describes the facility this way: The shack is under two feet of snow at the moment, but from the surface it looks for the most part like any <\/span>New England<\/span> spring-box cover that you come across while walking in the woods. Only, when you lift this cover you discover Dr. Evil’s secret underground radio laboratory, a re-creation of <\/span>Hogan’s Heros<\/i> radio station, or what I affectionately refer to as the “Hobbit Hole.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The two of us burrowed down 13 feet, breaking up boulders the size of a <\/span>VW Bug<\/i> as we went. Aside from the pick and shovel work, I used both one and two-handed sledges along with an assortment of rock chisels and pry bars. Everything came up in 5 gallons buckets. <\/span><\/p>\n

The lower-level slab used hand mixed concrete. The walls are 12″ thick insulated masonry blocks; a Canadian-made product called, <\/span>Sparfill<\/i>, that’s unfortunately no longer available here. We called in Ready-Mix for the concrete roof. The interior dimensions are a luxurious 2m square. <\/span><\/p>\n

As luck would have it, I had just taken some photos of the interior for my pal, DL3PB. Please find them attached. Actually, in one bench corner you’ll see the 2,400RPM <\/span>AC induction motor<\/span> and 400 pole stepper motor that I plan to use in the “Full Monty” version of the present project<\/span>.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mike has a wonderful posting on his blog today: http:\/\/aa1tj.blogspot.com<\/span>
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the interest of preserving what I suspect will become an important piece of amateur radio history, I’m posting some pictures of the underground radio shack and workshop of Michael, AA1TJ. Michael describes the facility this way: The shack is under two feet of snow at the moment, but from the surface it looks for … Continue reading “The Hobbit Hole”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aa1tj","category-workbench"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4848,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions\/4848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}