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Saturday, July 20, 2019

A Frequency Readout for the Fish Soup 10 (with cool BLUE numerals)

Note the cool BLUE numerals.  They represent 7040, 7050, 7060, 7070.  The little black "pointer" is from a power cord wall fastener.  My tuning cap has a nice reduction drive -- the pointer follows the movement of the capacitor blades.  The VFO is very stable. 

Simplicity is a virtue.  CW is, I think, outmoded and kind of absurd (one letter at a time?  really?), but it does allow for extreme simplicity.  Using a rig with just 10 transistors, putting out half a watt of RF,  I am regularly communicating with people.  This is what I like about CW.   

I've had about 12 solid contacts with this rig since putting it on the air earlier this month.  The VFO was a huge improvement over being crystal controlled. Crystal control was OK back when receivers were broad and hams tuned around for replies, but those days are gone.  Getting the transmit offset set correctly was another huge improvement. 

3 comments:

  1. Good job, Bill, making a similar rig from design by W1FB, but a couple of watts ! Need to melt some solder ! Congrats ! Jerry K9UT

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  2. I like the numbers, really retro.

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  3. I don't see any flicker. You've really fine tuned that charlie plexing routine, signs of a grip on that elusive quality, coding knack.

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