SolderSmoke Podcast #247 is available:
Audio Podcast: http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke247.mp3
Bill’s Bench:
The 15-10 Dual Bander.
n 10
pole crystal filter at 25 MHz.
n G3UUR,
Dishal, AADE and all that..
n Testing
woes. Looked bad. But it was a bad test cable. Duh.
n VFO
(Colpitts) at around 3.5 MHz.
n Buffer
blues: Bad J-310s. Beware!
n Variable
cap from a Heath Q Multiplier
n A
bit of a black art – competing goals. Freq coverage, etc.
n BFO
needed an amp to turn on the diodes in the balanced modulator
n TIA
amps. SIX dual direction TIAs. 18 transistors.
n On
a pine board (like Frank Jones)
n Will
use the N6QW all discrete AF amp.
n Maybe
an RD16 in the final?
n Will
build a second one for the DR.
Shameless Commerce: Mostly DIY RF and the PSSST kit. Todd K7TFC reports: “The P3ST is on
track for Lee Deforest's birthday release (August 26th). I'm going to send out
another newsletter on July 4th, and I'll give some details on P3ST development.”
Results of Todd’s Survey.
Pete’s
Bench
n
FT-8 on the KWM-1!
n
Presentation to the ham club.
n Why the Icom 7300 is the anti-thesis of homebrew.
MMAILBAG:
-- SPRAT 195 Summer 2023, in the
mailbox. A happy day at N2CQR
-- Armand WA1UQO sent a wonderful book about Faraday and Maxwell… And told
me Jim K8OI was heading to our area. I
met Jim at the VWS Field Day event.
FB. Thanks Armand.
-- Tony G4WIF sent Father’s Day greetings.
-- Alvin N5VZH asking about electrolytics for his 2-B. Hayseed Hamfest!
-- John AC2RL replacements for the IBEW.
We need to start over!
-- Steve “Snort Rosin” Smith WB6TNL was in the area. Sorry I missed him.
-- Joh DL6ID helping us to track down origins of a homebrew receiver
Grayson saw in Berlin.
-- Grayson KJ7UM was in Europe visiting his wife’s relatives. But I think he is back in the USA.
-- Walter KA4KXX sent a QRP HB family portrait.
-- Wouter ZS1KE sent info on surface mount soldering.
-- George Zaff KJ6VU Ham Radio Workbench – re-runs! Recommended audio
processor. Let me know how it sounds.
-- Michael AA1TJ Great to hear
from him.
-- Alan Wolke W2AEW on the toroids
he used in Diode Ring video.
Thanks Alan!
-- Dean KK4DAS, AI and SWR meter project
And new lexicon word:
Hamsplaining.
-- Bob N7SUR -- Let me know we are semifinalists in the Hack-A-Day prize!
Posts
Hate on the 7300 all you want, there is a reason SDRs aren't going away, that ancient boat anchor is cool but modern rigs like the 7300 are not going away until something even better comes along, and not everyone has the time to homebrew a hf rig and those that do homebrew never build anything that comes close to the 7300 in features and quality,
ReplyDeleteThe future of amateur radio should be just as diverse as in the past or even more so.
ReplyDeleteRadios like the IC7300 provide incredible levels of performance for a very low price relative to the boat anchors of the past. They are very democratic and of use for people at all levels of the hobby.
Some of us are time poor others not so.
I build when I can’t or don’t wish to buy.
Some of us are tinkerers, some are talkers and everything in between. For some it a scientific hobby separate from their working life. For others it leveraged by their day to day activities.
There is something for everyone with an interest.
Phone, code or digital as well as scientific experiments and discussions require regulated access to spectrum with a minimum required standard so as not to exclude the many.
Any station will be unique in many ways and require art and learning to establish.
The 0.1% in VK is aging and the future amateur service must be engaging and welcoming for the next generation of amateur spectrum users.
Andrew VK5CV
Look at it this way, both Pete and Bill like to use LTspice. How is LTspice free and open to hardware builders ? Because the purveyor of LTspice, Analog Devices, sells Icom the heart of every IC-7300, the high speed A to D converter (LTC-2208 ?) - and they aren't cheap !
ReplyDeleteAs a very tiny AD stockholder I also get a very small part of my dividend paid with every IC-7300 sale :)
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
Another great Solder Smoke Podcast. Understand the point on the 7300 from both sides. It really is less about SDR vs. HDR, moreso about Open vs Closed design. And certainly the "brand" needs to be protected. There are ways to do that and still be open. I have worked multiple 7300 ops with my all HB rigs, and that's fine. Some have done HB antennas or whatever else.
ReplyDeleteFaraday and Maxwell -- Required reading this summer, kiddies! Go get a copy of this masterpiece by Mahon and Forbes. After that do Senior Marconi justice with "Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World" by Raboy. In both books, you will find additional little gems about Heaviside, Fleming, Franklin, Lord Kelvin and those less biographied. Wish someone would do a book with on the lesser known but just as significant contributors to the art.
Finally, agree on the -6 (SF,iron-powder) vs -43( NiZn,ferrite) toroid DBM issue.The -6 probably could be used with (many) more turns. But the -43 will yield a wider BW in this application, typically. I use these and many other "mixes" in HB and work.
73!
WN2A
Thanks Mike: Indeed the Forbes/Mahon book is a real treasure. Too often we get a stereotype of Faraday as sort of a random hacker (like Edison?) with Maxwell as the cerebral mathematician. But this book paints a more complete picture of both: Faraday was a really disciplined scientist, and Maxwell had his roots in experimental science -- he even had what we would consider a shack/workshop as a kid. And I agree on Marconi -- the more you read about him, the more you come to appreciate his achievements. 73 Bill
ReplyDeleteTo me the worst thing about the Icom 7300 is,
ReplyDeletelike a lot of digital gadgets these days (such as the iPad), it is useless out-of-the-box. It requires the (often clueless new ham) user to first go through an elaborate setup procedure that they need to search for online. No viable default settings are
included, and none can be found in the over one hundred pages of manuals.
If you go on the air without the settings that all the other 7300 owners in your area are using, you will be insulted and castigated. I have heard several hams being attacked on the air so cruelly for
"bad settings" that they were almost driven to tears!
If the manufacture really cared one whit about the customer, they would provide default setups programmed at the factory so the average user with the stock microphone could at least get on the air quickly and make a simple contact without being roundly criticized.
Also, a lot of the digital radios are programmed either accidentally or intentionally by the user to have a bandwidth larger than the legal 3 KHz because they are obsessed with getting compliments on "how good their audio sounds" by people on their frequency, not caring that others on nearby frequencies are suffering from their splashing.
All of these modern radios have loads of essentially useless features that only serve as clutter standing in the way of most hams who simply only want to listen and talk on the radio, not operate a nuclear power plant.
Quite often I hear a 7300 come on the air off-frequency or garbled because they accidentally changed a setting, since all it takes is a casual, inadvertent touch.
I have a highly accomplished ham friend who lives two miles from me with a 7300. We both have dipole antennas and at one time participated in the same net on 40 meters. As we both listened hard for some of the weaker stations, he commented several times to me that my receiver (homebrew BITX) was as good as his 7300!
The audio sounds great guys! It's been cool to hear the clarity improve over the years. Presence and Soul.
ReplyDeleteThose J310's that were giving you trouble. They weren't the same as you have on your parts list for the High School 40 meter DC Receiver is it? I was about to buy some for the build.
ReplyDeleteFrank: Fortunately the J-310s for the school receiver project came from a different (good!) batch. 73 Bill
ReplyDeleteI know that this is a little late to the thread but an additional point about SDR vs HDR is the "lifetime" (meaning manufacturer's production availability) of the various components. I have designed both ways, fully SDR systems and also fully Analog "beasts", I bear no bias either way. But this "lifetime" of many programmable devices is, in general, shorter than the simpler, commodity devices, often multi-sourced. So as I program a new microcontroller or an FPGA etc, and spend the many hours working in assembly or C++ , I wonder how long this design will be relevant?
ReplyDeleteWhen will the manufacturer of this part decide to obsolete it, maybe because of their foundry issues,etc and finding a replacement is an issue. This problem is especially acute for those who design for any market that has a long design cycle, like the defense industry.
Amazingly, there are many commodity linear and digital components I designed into projects back in the 1970's, that are still available, but good luck with the programmable devices. Sadly, these were obsoleted long ago! At that point, it becomes necessary to find a new part, and with it, the programming cycle that comes with it. If you could find a programmable device manufacturer that supplied the part for 10+ years, you were doing great!
73!