Kansas Mighty Mite

Greetings Bill

I have been a bit ill,  but finally found some time to work on my Meara Mighty Mite, which i wish to call it as it was by the grace of Bill Meara that I am able to play a part in the Colorburst Revolution could begin.

I just wanted to share some pictures from the bench of my progress, which is not yet fit for the ether.

I originally wanted to build a really unique design. I have a tendency to complicate things. The more simple it is, the more complicated I tend to make it. After a lot ambitious failed starts, I decided that the best thing to do is to keep it simple. In fact, I would say that I was "over-noodling" this one. So I just started building.

I use copper clad PCB, which I get for very cheap from an ebay seller named abcfab. I use a tool I made to cut islands by hand. Information can be found about this method on my blog.

I am almost embarrassed to share photos of my build, especially after seeing such wonderful designs as you have featured on the webpage. But the excitement is just to great, so here it goes:

I build ugly circuits and I'm proud of it.

I haven't build the LPF yet and wouldn't put it on the air without one. 

Thanks for all the great inspiration and for inspiring a revolution of colorburst liberation!

I want to share something from Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur, W7ZOI & W1FB, page 19

"All of the circuits shown are aimed at reasonable stability, but have relatively low output power. It is possible to bias many of these circuits higher to obtain outputs of up to perhaps 1/4 watt. However, thermal stability is often severely degraded, chirp is introduced if the oscillator is keyed, and the user stands a chance of damaging the crystal from excessive rf current. It is not recommended that a single oscillator stage be used as a simple transmitter. The addition of an amplifier is so straightforward, and the system efficiency is so much better, that the minimal simplicity is not of value."

That may be true, but the Mighty Mite is for learning and getting our feet wet. Still it may be interesting to point the above out or talk about it.

Also, I'm curious to know which schematics everyone is using. The famous Easy QRP transmitter on the QSL page, perhaps DeMaw's from QRP notebook (available on archive.org in pdf form for free).

73, keep your iron hot and stay fluxy,

-KE0BFF, Lawrence KS.

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