😀 Completed the wiring the LBS Part I (pics attached)
I've said wiring completed but, it's not really done. lt will need some peakin' & tweakin' and I already have made design changes to the power board.
My Summer Project took ALL Summer, had the usual excuses with Summer activities, family obligations, interruptions and days of just plain goldbricking.
At last all the LBS Part I boards were laid out, etched, populated, soldered and installed. As a novice Toroid winder it took a while to get the toroids done. (I had to do THREE DBM Transformers to get two to match.)
Some features of note:
1. Extensive use of the recycle bin for front / rear panels and feet. (Tin can and bottle caps) Go Green!
2. Extra Mojo was induced with using the 10K pot Farhan supplied with my first Bitx40 Kit that I did not use, (I replaced it because I could not find knobs for 4mm shafts back then)
3. Junk box speaker (8 Ohm - 0.5 W) from a cheap radio alarm clock my Mom threw away after it stopped working.
4. Use of the RG405 coax for interstage RF connections. (No Murphy's Whiskers)
😞 My tale of woe. Apparently after connecting the LBS Part I stages together I put the AD9850 module back in it's socket upside down --- then applied power, Awaiting the replacement. HIHI
😜 SITB or Stick-It-To-Bezos. Again this month my Ham stuff budget was blown on an Amazon order (replacement AD9850 modules being not cheap anymore). I started at the soldersmoke blog web page search bar so there should be a little something heading to your North Virginia QTH from Jeff.
73,
AB1OP_Ralph
A thing of beauty! Congratulations, Ralph! I look forward to working you when you get this on-the-air.
ReplyDeleteFB on the smoked 9850. We've all done that - you've got the right attitude: Don't let it get you down, just order another one and keep stickin' it to the Man!
Pete's got an excellent YouTube tutorial for winding the trifilar toroidal transformers. His technique makes winding them a snap - it's so simple that I kick myself for not having figured it out for myself!
73 Steve N8NM
I love the discussion about the 17 meter Moxon. I have a story about Moxons, too. When I first got my Technician ticket, then upgraded to General, my partner and I lived in an apartment, on the 3rd floor. HF I managed by shooting a magnet wire off the balcony into the trees across the parking lot, and tuning it with a random-wire tuner. But 2 meters was a problem. The J-poles I tried caused RFI in the upstairs neighbor's clock radio, and if I transmitted, he'd bang on his floor with a hammer. It was a shame, the J-pole was a lovely copper pipe model I'd sprayed with textured fleck paint so it matched the brick and couldn't be seen.
ReplyDeleteBut I had to come up with an antenna that would still get out well but not interfere with the neighbor's stuff. So I made a pair of 2m Moxons, one for each of us, and put them inside wooden garden privacy screens on each end of our balcony. The pattern of the Moxons kept the RF out of the building, we could be heard very well outside, and the antennas were invisible in those garden screens! I topped them off with little 70 cm ground-plane spikes built on SO-239 sockets, on top of the privacy screens. We had no trouble at all from the apartment complex, and the neighbor stopped banging on his floor with a hammer.