Station Log
and Details of Activities
- 2/27/2011
- Well, what can I say...its been awhile since I update my
page..sorry. Finished the dual bander and after some tweaking,
got it the way I wanted it to end up. Never used it last summer, but
maybe this year at Dayton. I did add a page call the "Super VXO" which
I should have done about a year ago...at least that is when I finished
the playing with it part on the work bench. I can get about 30 KHz
swing out of a plain old cheap 40 meter crystal. See the material I
post here.
- Been playing with ATMEL AVR chips
and plan on some PIC playing too before we leave for some camping this
spring! Not sure what I will play with
next...but have a Regie II that I bought last year at Dayton from Rex
at QRPme...so maybe I will do
that first and then figure out what to play with this summer.
- 5/1/2010
- Amazing that summer is almost upon us. Working on a KD1JV dual bander
(80 and 40 mtrs) rig along with some odds & ends.
Getting my RV station gear ready to put in the camper for some
fun at Dayton and then camping in MI, OH, IN and NY.
- 1/14/2010
- Started playing with PICAXE and AVR microprocessors on
breadboards...lots of fun and easy to setup and use. I think I need to
distract myself from RF stuff for a time and just play with whatever
catches my interest. Watch for updates on the mircroprocessor page
(coming soon!).
- 12/18/09
- Been playing more than updating things...including my web page and
lab book. Have been working on a 40 Combo Rig made with 4SQRP's NS-40
transmiter and VRX-1 receiver. Have it together and have been actually
on the air with a contact with Ron, K3SEW out of Howard, PA. I need to
create a separate page for all the info and pictures. Click here for what I have posted so far.
- 8/24/09
- Been quite busy camping this summer. Hope to get some homebrew
projects done now that I am home again.
- 3/29/09
- G3RJV Polyvaricon Tuned Sudden
Receiver.
- Built up a project this weekend. It is a direct
conversion receiver for 40 meters, but can easily be scaled for any
band.
- Got the idea from a blog site. You can see the
article at qrper.blogspot.
- I am putting most of the info here on my web
site, DC Receiver Project
- 3/3/09
- The last few weeks have been rough
for me, but now all seems to be back in order.
- The Willamette it done and working very well.
Hope that my first contact will be with Jason, NT7S who is the one who
designed the project.
- Started the Four State's Club project called the
"HF Test Set". Fun and easy kit to assemble. My grandkids left today
for home so I hope to get this new project done soon.
- I am working on a local club (Casades Amateur
Radio Club here in Jackson) project for a series of homebrew projects.
Have six guys who are interested in participating...we will start with
a RF Probe using a 1N5711, then a Noise Generator, then a TT2.
- Will be changing some admin stuff on the web
page and might lose access for a couple of days, but will update as
soon as possible.
- 1/8/09
-Spent days working on
getting the receiver parts installed on my Willamette 20 meter CW
Transceiver. This is the most fun homebrew project I've done in a
long time. I'm posting the MDS between -125 and -130 dBm, audio out is
crisp and rich in sound with little to no hiss/noise. Now starting the
transmitter portion.
- 12/21/08
- Spent the last few days building and playing with a Return Loss
Bridge (RLB) and a "Direct-read Impedance Using a Scope" bridge of
sorts.
- The RLB is from Jim, K8IQY's web page and can
also be found in EMRFD. It works as expected and has really
opened my eyes to what return loss is about.
- The Direct-read bridge consists of five
resistors in a bridge configuration. You can measure both amplitude and
phase with it. The phase part is important if you want to get an
idea of what the impedance is of the DUT.
- I will get some schematics and comments for both
items on here soon.
- 12/15/08
- I spent nearly the entire time today in
the shack working on my analysis of the UWA.
- The measurements done last night (actually very
early this morning) were not quite right. The output levels were
2 or 3 dBm low caused by a termination issue which I didn't recognize
until I talked with the UWA designer today. Got that little
glitch resolved and the rest of it ended up on its own web page...click here to see.
- I am now pondering what to do next. I
would like to get an RF Probe and Noise Generator done and uploaded
here on the web. I think that would add some easy to build but
quite useful tools for a homebrewer who is just starting out.
- W8DIZ recently introduced a new RF Toolkit call
" 5 Watt CW RF
Amplifier" that uses one 2N5109 and two 2SC5739s.
This is going to be a FANTASTIC circuit to have around for boosting
very low levels of RF up to around 4 to 5 watts. More to come.
- 12/14/08
- Wideband Amp, new paddle, understanding
instrumentation measurements.
- Built up one of W8DIZ's RF Toolkits, this one is
call the Universal Wideband Amplifier (UWA). I will try to get some
info up on a page once I get done looking how linear it is from 3.5 to
30 MHz.
- I also received a new set of paddles a couple of
days ago from K8VF. The paddle is made in the Ukraine and seems
to be all brass. The name of it is CT 599 Iambic. s/n 062, made
in 2004. I really like this paddle!
- I had a heck of a time setting up my scope, SA,
freq generator and power meter. Learned more about what I never
knew or had forgotten <smile>. Scopes display voltage in
terms of peak-to-peak (pk-pk), and not in rms. Determining power
levels in dBm from a scope presentation is a fun exercise in math...I
cheated and used a table I found on the internet. I did go back
and revisit the math required though. Measuring signals in the RF range
require termination in a particular way, and in my case in ways I
wasn't expecting.
- <>12/11/08
- Added HF Prop Condx box on front page.
- <> Want to add a pic of my dual lever
paddle,
it is a CT 599 brass made in the Ukraine. Very comfortable to use
and the looks are very nice.
- Received my digikey and mouser orders, also got
an OCR Regen and SW-4-+ kits from a 4-lander. Felt like Christmas
today...LOL.
- 12/9/08
- Enlarged web page pics of workbench.
- Want to start doing a template for laying out
either "glued down" pads or "islander" pads for JXN TT2 project.
- Want to build NT7S's broadband noise generator
- Put an attenuator in the Tracking Generator for
my W7ZOI SA so the signal does not swamp the baseline display on the SA.<><><>