Serving the worldwide community of radio-electronic homebrewers.
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http://soldersmoke.com
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Just go to http://soldersmoke.com. On that archive page, just click on the blue hyperlinks and your audio player should play that episode.
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SolderSmoke Podcast #148 is available: http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke148.mp3 December 30, 2012 SPONSORED BY usedradiomall.com -- Hurricane Follow-up -- Subliminal Mind Control to Encourage Homebrewing (beep-beep) -- The Shortcomings of the All American Five Receiver -- Solid-Stating a Heath SG-6 (with Farhan's circuit) -- VK3YE's Beach DSB Rig -- Tek 'scope connection to frequency counter -- Mod to W7ZOI/W7PUA power meter -- JBOTing my 20 meter DSB Rig -- A Tale of Woe -- LU1AR "The Most Interesting Ham in the World" -- Billy's Raspberry Pi -- Latest QST, SPRAT, Hot Iron -- Videos: Landfillharmonica, Knack in Sierra Leone -- Santa delivered a Soldering Station -- MAILBAG
There is an old saying in Spanish: "No hay mal que por bien no venga." More or less this is the same idea as: "Every dark cloud has a silver lining." Well, the dark cloud was my techno-agony with the parasitic oscillations (see below). The silver lining was the e-mail from Edgardo, LU1AR, in Buenos Aires that helped me get rid of them. Edgardo advised putting a resistor across the primaries of the JBOT amplifier stages. This is an old "lower the Q" trick, the idea being that lowering the Q might help prevent the amp from self-oscillating. I used 680 ohm resistors. First I put one across the primary of Q1. No joy. Then Q2. No luck. Then I put one right across the primary of that big output transformer. That did it! The parasitics disappeared. And I still get a nice 4 watts of output. Thanks Edgardo. I hope to make a contact with this rig today. The real silver lining in this story comes, however, in the form of Edgardo's blog site. Wow, what an inspiring example of Argentinian Knack. Radios, telescopes, auto-giros. This guy is also into homebrew DSB rigs. Wonderful stuff. Check it out. (Google will translate it for you, if necessary, but even if you don't read Spanish, the pictures tell most of the story.) http://www.lu1ar.blogspot.com.ar/ Thanks to all who sent advice and encouragement. Merry Christmas!
I'm building my FOURTH JBOT and this one is giving me more trouble than all the others combined. Here are the details of my tale of woe: 20 meter rig. Double Sideband. The JBOT is fed by a simple two-diode, trifilar toroid singly balanced modulator. NO DIPLEXER TO SPEAK OF. At the output of the balanced modulator there is a 1000 uH choke to ground and a .001 uF cap to the input of the JBOT. AF amp is an LM-386. VXO is a very simple MPF-102 one stage ceramic resonator VXO with no buffer stage. 7 element low pass filter (three coils, four caps). All the transformers are wound on FT-37-43 cores. T3 is four such cores stacked 2X2. The arrangement works beautifully into a 50 ohm dummy load. But as soon as I connect it to an antenna (a dipole out in the yard, fed with 50 ohm coax) the output signal gets ugly. Looking at it on the scope, instead of the nice figure eight pattern (similar to the two tone test pattern of SSB) I get ugly fuzzy outcroppings from the peaks. Looking at the signal more closely I can see that in addition to the 14.2 Mhz signal, there is another LF oscillation at around 250 kHz. I've been struggling with this. I can't get rid of the LF oscillations. The leads are all short and the inputs are far from the outputs. I've beefed up shielding, and decoupling. I've sacrificed a chicken to Papa Legba. Nothing seems to help. I THINK the feedback/oscillation is taking place in the JBOT itself -- not through the audio amp or the balanced modulator or the VXO. I watch the RF and the AF inputs to the balanced modulator to see if there is any difference between the stable situation (with the 50 ohm dummy load) and the unstable situation (with the antenna), I don't see any differences. I even put an antenna tuner between the final and the antenna anb made sure that the antenna looks like 50 ohms non reactive. This seems to help a bit, but the ugly instability is still there. Help me! \
Watch this video and you will see that Limor Fried has The Knack!
She and her company have brought homebrew electronics back to lower Manhattan.
Some kind listener sent me a gift certificate for Ada Fruit. We will put it to good use, probably
with Raspberry Pi and Arduino gear.
Three cheers for Lady Ada!
Wow, this is a really inspiring video about being inventive, overcoming obstacles, using what you find and putting junk to good use. I thought you guys would like this (ESPECIALLY ROBERTO!).
Very cool: Japanese students sent up a small satellite. One of its capabilities is to flash Morse code messages in the visible light range using LEDs. Prepare to peg your geek meter: http://www.fit.ac.jp/~tanaka/fitsat.shtml
In response to popular demand, "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" is now available as an e-book for Amazon's Kindle.
Here's the site:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V9FIVW
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For the print version:
For shipping from a printer in the U.S. (probably better for N. American buyers) Click here: SolderSmoke USA Version
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For shipping from a printer in the UK, Spain, or the USA (probably better for UK and other European buyers)
Click here: SolderSmoke EU Version
The two versions are identical, except for a minor difference in the paper used. That's why the prices are a bit different.
The QRP Lifestyle
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Redwood Tree at Diablo Market in Lafayette, California I’ve had the Gold
Dust Twins listed for sale for several weeks, and at first I tried to sell
everyth...
IC-705
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Many people are following the European and USA release of this new radio
from ICOM with great interest. At the moment the price and availability are
not kn...
DXing The Utilities (Part 2)
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*The following blog was originally posted in 2015 but might still be of
interest to anyone with a shortwave radio! Since the migration of HF aero
traffic t...
40m SSB Tramping Rig
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Please see my YouTube channel for details of the build.
http://www.youtube.com/c/CharlieMorrisZL2CTM
*2N3904 Antenna Amplifier*
Voltage gain is set for 4 ...
8 Band Superhet AM Receiver
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Amplitude Modulation holds a fascination for me. It dates back to those
hours spent as a teenager listening to the big broadcast-like amateur AM
stations i...
Heathkit GC-1006 Clock Assembly Log
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Packed in a plain cardboard box inside of a Priority Mail shipping box,
awaiting my attention. On top the famous Heathkit assembly manual, and a
note congr...
Checking Step Attenuator with NanoVNA
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I decided to check the step attenuator with the NanoVNA. It would be nice
to see what the linearity of the step attenuator is across the frequency
range I...
Bringing back my Atari 400…
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Brace yourself for old guy reminiscing about the past. Back in 1980, I was
a sixteen year old kid with a goal: to buy my own computer. I spent a year
mowin...
A Homebrew Stereo for the Shack
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There are times when it's nice to listen to a little music while working at
the bench. For years, I've used a number of different vintage radios for
thi...
A New Look for your uBitx!
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Adding a "Cool Blue" Display to your uBitx!
The standard "green background" with black lettering frequently reminds me
that I suffer from Chronic seasicknes...