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Thursday, July 19, 2018

Homebrew Juju -- HB2HB


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? 




3 comments:

  1. Sweet! That’s even better than the time I heard you (and video taped you) on my Drake 2B!

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  2. What is that thing that looks like a bread slicer and has the small knob? Where is the Encoder and Si5351? Nice animated GIF.

    Pete N6QW

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  3. 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.
    I’ll be looking for you again on 40 meters Bill this time with my uBITX.

    Skip NC9O

    ReplyDelete

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