February 23, 2026
SolderSmoke Podcast #263 is available for download:
Audio: http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke263.mp3
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn164glxQ6s
Opening
May 26, 2014, coming up on 12 years! That was the 1st podcast where Pete N6QW was interviewed by Bill in Podcast #161, which means 102 podcasts ago. 12 Years of Julian-ismo. Thanks Pete!
What to build? Question faced by VWS Makers Group and by Charlie of RedSummit RF. Regen? Test Gear? Simple oscillator?
But did you DESIGN it yourself? What does that even really mean? Barrie Gilbert in Jim Williams' book: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2025/12/homebrew-you-say-but-did-you-design-it.html
Grayson KJ7UM on a podcast -- Make it your own way. Copper Clad and Glue! Manhattan style! "BUILD SOMETHING!: Tube testers not necessary. OK to call thermatrons "vacuum tubes." No ruling on calling them "valves" yet.
Pete:
-- When hams were hams -- Turning a Heath monobander into a tribander
-- Simple SSB
-- W7ZOI rigs
-- The Yaesu FT-101
SHAMELESS COMMERCE DIVISION: Mostly DIY RF! Patreon! But no more Amazon. We do not want to help Bezos make more money. Even if this will cost us. So please, consider a donation or a Patreon sponsorship instead. But no more Amazon through SolderSmoke.
Bill:
-- Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico on 2 meters -- status report.
-- Working Australia on 20 meter SSB in the morning.
-- The SpiderWeb net.
-- The Hubble Space Telescope -- an old friend
-- One contact on Straight Key Night (Dean reminded me). I worked NB1U on 20 meters with QCX from KD4EBM.
Dean:
-- The University of Michigan ant the Direct Conversion receiver project.
-- Boxing up the amplifier. A tale of woe. Identifying oscillations. A QSO with the Dominican Republic: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-qso-with-dean-kk4das-northern.html
Ian VK3MO Huge antennas, big signal, friendship with WA3O https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2025/11/vk3mo-and-wa3o-brotherhood-of-ham-radio.html
Bob KD4EBM 2 meter propagation info
Todd K7TFC -- Mostly DIY RF
Mike K6STR Worked Pete on 40, building for CW and SSB on 2 meters
Grayson KJ7UM German Avionics, MMM Origin. Old Steampunk Homebrew rig: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2025/12/a-very-interesting-old-steam-punk.html
Phil W1PJE Forrest Mims III Mims's sad denial on climate change.
Ciprian YO2DXE Heard the SAQ Alternator see: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2025/12/alexanderson-alternator-on-172-khz.html
Tom NS6T: Very useful azimuth map with grey lines: https://ns6t.net/AzShadowMap/
Walter KA4KXX -- 20 meter Direct Conversion Receiver. FB Walter!
WN2A Mike Dos Equis man is BACK! https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2026/01/hes-back-dos-equis-man-most-interesting.html
KB4HG Rhett: On USB on the Old Military Radio Net with a PRC-74. Want one!
Thanks to all of you; another terrific podcast, including more
ReplyDeletelaughs than most comedy shows!
To weigh in, regarding radio design, a schematic is only
a small portion of that. The placement, mounting, choice
and proximity of parts, diameter, type, and length of wires,
ground plane, shielding, and so much more are all part of
RF engineering design. Consider the size of a Heathkit
Manual and how few pages are devoted to the schematic.
Further, my experience has been that building anything electronic
successfully yourself is very difficult, even from kits (except for Heathkit). My kit building started at my very first Cub Scout Pack Meeting when I was eight years old. All thirty of us kids were given
a crystal radio kit with a tunable loopstick, fixed capacitor, crystal earphone, Fahnestock connectors mounted on a board, and a semiconductor diode that was about a quarter inch in diameter and a half inch long.
We all built the kits during the meeting and none of them worked!
At the Pack Meeting the next month, although there was no
announcement by leadership, the buzz was that all the diodes were
defective, and no remedy was offered. Therefore I did not build a
successful radio until I got a Heathkit Experimenter's Kit many years later.
When I was in high school an adult neighbor asked me to build a new-fangled automobile electronic ignition kit for him. It did not work.
After that when the LED was invented I bought a kit of a Popular Electronics "digital" voltmeter which used rows of individual single-color LED's to indicate approximate voltage. It was non-functional.
When I first got back into the hobby 11 years ago I built a Pixie kit.
It transmitted but there was no audio on receive, and the design
had no sidetone.
Even recently, in the past few months I built 5 different VHF Regen receivers after watching YouTube videos where they were each successfully demonstrated, including some by notable designers. None of them worked, at all. My only consolation is that I did build a successful chip-based FM Receiver a few years ago
and I know how difficult building at VHF is.
So far as mentioning homebrew on the air, most commonly when I say "10 watt homebrew rig here" they recognize and repeat the 10 watts part but never acknowledge the homebrewing at all. I think this is because us homebrewers are such a very tiny portion of
a hobby that is primarily about buying, trading, selling and
collecting large quantities of radios. Comparably, it even seems
like getting on the air is a small part of the hobby compared with
ham radio ownership and collection.
72, Walter KA4KXX
Thanks Walter. Indeed, it is not easy! Thanks for sharing this. 73 Bill
Deleteproject ideas:
ReplyDelete1) crystal set: one source of a high impedance speaker is a telephone ringer piezo, the CPE-6080 is still available at DigiKey.
2) convert the crystal set to a regen ? add a tickler winding to the coil, a transistor, a battery and some biasing and away you go !
3) beyond a crystal set a project will need power, next thing to try after battery power is building a power supply - I learned a lot about electronics by building power supplies.
4) extend the direct conversion receiver to single signal (phasing or superhet ?)
As was said: ideas are easy (but fun), physical realizations are hard :)
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
Commenting on episode 263, what about a transmitter build as the next project?
ReplyDelete