Oh man, last night the Radio Gods were on my side. I only had about a half hour on 40 SSB, but I had some really nice QSOs. WB2HJK George in NYC was very interested in the BITX revolution. W3BT in Philadelphia is a kind-hearted OT who ran an ENORMOUS Yagi atop a row-house in the city -- the antenna extended over the street and TWO of his neighbors houses. Never had a TVI problems. FB. SS listener WA3O Mike called in -- Mike is the fellow who gave me my HW-7. Mike has been running his uBITX into a homebrew 500 watt LDMOS amp. FB Mike.
Then the real miracle happened. Just as I was about to throw the switch, Glenn KU4NO called. I decided to give him a report. But then he said something I rarely hear: "My rig is homebrew too!" I checked the log -- I had spoken to Glenn before, but our last QSO was in December 2001. I was in the Azores. Glenn was on the same homebrew rig. We had a nice talk about his rig. FB.
Glenn told me that in all his years on the air, he has only had a few contacts with other homebrew stations. He had a list of them: 1) W4ZCB, 2) N6ORS (FB! SS Listener!), N2CQR ("No wait -- I just heard you but we didn't talk.") and W2JUQ. I will tell Glenn that he needs to add CU2JL to the list -- that was me in 2001 and I was indeed homebrew DSB.)
To top it all off, Dino KL0S was listening and recorded the final part of the QSO. See below. (The video might take a few minutes to load.)
In honor of that FB night on 40 I am re-posting the animated GIF of my BITX-17 build. I hope it doesn't make you seasick!
Also, I think we need to add a term to the SolderSmoke lexicon: Juju. As in Homebrew Juju. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juju Right? What do you think Steve Silverman?
Sweet! That’s even better than the time I heard you (and video taped you) on my Drake 2B!
ReplyDeleteWhat is that thing that looks like a bread slicer and has the small knob? Where is the Encoder and Si5351? Nice animated GIF.
ReplyDeletePete N6QW
Hey Pete that is a bread slicer after all the PC backplane is on a breadboard. Neat build video Bill don’t you wish they all went together that fast.
ReplyDeleteI’ll be looking for you again on 40 meters Bill this time with my uBITX.
Skip NC9O