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Thursday, January 8, 2015
W5USJ's AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL Mighty Mite
More beauty and technical details at his site:
http://www.w5usj.com/mmmassytest.html
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Labels:
Michigan Mighty Mite,
minimalist radio
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Goats, a Paraset, and a QSO with a Mighty Mite! (Video)
This is a really wonderful video, made even more wonderful near the end by the appearance of a Michigan Mighty Mite! Thanks Steve! Thanks Nick!
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Labels:
Michigan Mighty Mite,
Old radio,
video
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Nick's BITX
Good Evening Gentlemen,
Pleased to report that, inspired by Pete’s help before Christmas, and innumerable comments by Bill over the last few months, I have a working BitX receiver strip – first light about 30 minutes ago on a short length of random wire but still heard a couple of Italian stations.
Followed Pete’s example and built each stage as a module, I used MePads, having noodled the layout, which is far from optimum, but did mean that I could tinker and, more to the point, test each section before I connected it together, so that starting from the amplifiers (Pete’s design), I was able to test the mixer after a bit of thought and then slowly work my way back through the filter, via the amplifier blocks, DBM, and back to the BP filter … Came together surprisingly quickly working as you suggested Pete, and nice manageable chunks too. I think about 2 hours for each module to noodle the layout, test it and document what I’d done.
Still lots to do, using a semi commercial BP for now as I need some bits that I’ve ordered to build a homebrew BP filter, the crystal filter isn’t optimised and just uses Fahran's suggested values, nothing is properly tweaked so far, but, it does work – thanks guys !!
I’ll follows Fahran's suggestion and tinker with it on rx for now, might build a VFO so it’s ALL discrete devices. Currently all 2n3904s except for the 2n3906 in the audio stage, and of course the Chinese DDS with an Arduino so I have followed the path that Bill set out a while back – it’s a little deaf against my FRG7 so far but tweaking the filter to match the impedances a little better will probably help, and the filter has a lot of ripple.
Next stage will be to build a microphone amp and test it on the Tx side, then tackle a small linear amplifier for it, I’ll stick to around 5 watts for now, and inevitably, I can see it being tinkered with in the course of time.
VERY pleased – thank you both for your help and inspiration
73s
Nick, G8INE
Hi Nick,
Congratulations – very nice looking and the other bonus of building it large the 1st time through is when you build the 2nd one –you 1) know the circuit works and 2) you can optimize the layout. I frequently said that I often build two of the same, learning from the 1st and applying to the second. See below. Version 1 was a larger board in comparison to the whole radio in version 2.
Bravo – in short order you should be making lots of QSO’s
Pete N6QW
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Labels:
BITX20,
Farhan,
Juliano -- Pete,
UK
25% off On SolderSmoke Book (and on "Us and Them") through Jan 8
You can find all the books on this Lulu site: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/soldersmoke
Just plug in the code FLASHY15 when checking out.
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Who is this earnest young radio amateur?
Name that ham! Here are his comments:
This is vintage early 1960’s and my call sign at that time was K3???. One of my favorite rigs was the Johnson Adventurer which I built and had a 6AG7 driving an 807 –50 watts input. On the top shelf near the lamp is the screen grid modulator for the Adventurer. I was in tall clover.
On the bottom opening is a 40M CW transceiver I built – it had a 6CX8 MOPA—about 5 watts. The RX was a two tube regen.
Labels:
Marconi-Guglielmo,
Old radio,
radio history,
Regens,
Tubes
Friday, January 2, 2015
A Thatched Roof, Some Palm Trees, A Dipole, and a Homebrew Rig
Look at the drawing above. That is the banner logo of Rod Newkirk's column in QST magazine. For many years Rod regaled us with exciting reports on the activities of intrepid foreign radio amateurs, transmitting from exotic locations using ingeniously devised homebrew radio equipment. Look at the picture on the left side. See the palm trees? See the thatched roof shack with the dipole antenna? Well, that's pretty close to what it was like for me out on the Samana Peninsula in the Dominican Republic last month.
I set up the station under the thatched roof in this picture:
The red pins mark the spot:
Here I am, tuning the rig while looking across Bahia Rincon:
The rig was my Azores-built, oft-modified, NE602-based, ceramic resonator DSB transceiver with a recently added India-designed BITX IRF510 RF amplifier chain. A little article I wrote about the ceramic resonator VXO was featured in SPRAT 127. My antenna was a half wave dipole strung up in the thatched roof. Power came from 10 AA Batteries. So this was the Double A, Double Sideband, Dipole DX-pedition.
I had given some thought to building an SSB rig for this trip, but because of the efforts of Peter Parker, VK3YE, I felt compelled to take a DOUBLE Sideband rig with me to the beach.
Here is an old (2006) video on the rig. The power amplifier has been significantly modified:
Here is some more information on the rig, including a schematic for the receiver and the SPRAT article on the Variable Ceramic Oscillator:
http://www.gadgeteer.us/PORTABLE.html
Here is the log book for my contacts.
17 DECEMBER 2014
W1JPR PAUL MT. DESERT ISLAND MAINE
8P6AE (BARBADOS) COULD BARELY HEAR ME, BUT GOOD QSO
18 DECEMBER 2014
N4USA DAVE IN FLOYD, VA. FAIRS NET. (KK4WW.COM)
KE4UGF DON ALSO FAIRS, NICE GUYS. FUN CONTACTS!
KA4ROG ROGER NORTH OF ORLANDO
19 DECEMBER 2014
WB2HPV GUIDO TALKING TO ITALIANS EVERY MORNING FROM WAYNE NJ. HE HAD TROUBLE HEARING ME.
CONDITIONS SEEMED POOR, BUT I WAS HEARING AUSTRALIAN STATIONS
W8GEO GEORGE IN THE INTERCON NET. HEARD ME.
ALSO ON INTERCON: KA4AOQ AND 6Y5MP (JAMAICA) ALSO HEARD ME.
N4PD PAUL
W3JXY/4 NAT IN KEY WEST
N1FM TOM, NORTH OF MIAMI SOLID QSO.
KM4MA PAUL IN ORLANDO WITH MARITIME MOBILE NET.
20 DECEMBER 2014
NA2LF LLOYD IN NY
WB8YWR JIM IN DALLAS
KM4MA.
W1AW/3 IN MARYLAND (TOOK ME A WHILE TO GET HIM)
21 DECEMBER 2014 NICE 4 WAY SPANISH LANGUAGE QSO:
KI4PZE MIGUEL
CO8OT JUAN IN SANTIAGO DE CUBA
WA4RME RAFA IN CHARLESTON S.C.
C08KB MARCO IN CUBA
Here is a short video showing the station and the location. Note the little birds (Golondrinas or Swallows) flying by. They nest in the thatched roof. They often got confused and flew inside the house. Billy and Maria rescued many of them. Whales breed in this bay in January and February. There are also manatees. It is really a beautiful place.
There were obviously other attractions (!) so I didn't spend a lot of time on the radio -- just a half hour or so every now and then. But it was really very satisfying to carry this little homebrew device with me, set it up in this amazing place, and use it to send my voice across mountains and hundreds of miles of ocean. I built this rig in the Azores and have used it in the UK, France, Italy and the Dominican Republic. It contains circuits devised by members of the British QRP club and by my friend Farhan in India. The ceramic resonator circuit is something I cooked up on my own. The microphone is from my old Sony Walkman and the pen that serves as its support is from that wonderful magazine "Electric Radio." In short, there is a lot of soul in this little machine. And it was a lot of fun to take it to the beach.
Thanks to Elisa for finding us this wonderful place. And to Rod Newkirk and QST for the DX inspiration.
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Thanks to Elisa for finding us this wonderful place. And to Rod Newkirk and QST for the DX inspiration.
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Labels:
BITX20,
Dominican Republic,
DSB,
Farhan,
magazines,
Parker--Peter,
QRP,
SPRAT
N2HTT's MMM Makes Contacts (the little rubber feet are important)
- LED tx power indicator, and
- little rubber feet
Of all of these, I cannot sufficiently emphasize the importance of little rubber feet. A project just cannot be considered complete without them.
More pictures and details of the low pass filter are on my blog at http://n2htt.net
I've had a lot of fun with this little rig, it's a keeper.
Keep up the great work with the podcasts, and Happy Holidays
73
Mike N2HTT
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Labels:
Michigan Mighty Mite,
minimalist radio
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