The Green Hornet -- My Visual and 10 meter Beacon from the Dominican Republic

This all started a LONG time ago when I built a "Lil Slugger" CW transmitter, designed by Doug DeMaw. The schematic appears below -- it appears in both the W1FB Design Notebook, and his QRP Notebook.  

Last year I decided to put it on the air from the Dominican Republic.  Mike WN2A sent me a programmed PIC chip to key the beacon.  I just connected the output of the keyer to the base of the Lil Sluggers keying transistor.  This transistor just switched the transmitter's driver transistor on and off. 

In the course of messing with this device (and trying to get it to work with a 2 meter beacon) I managed to release smoke from Mike's keyer.  Fortunately, Mike had sent the schematic and I was able to tell that it was probably just the PNP transistor at the very end of the keyer circuit.  I have some 2N3906s on hand.  I replaced the suspect part and Bob was my Uncle.  I consider this a "good repair" -- I had to identify the fault, and then replace the part to make the device work.  

Then came the fun part.  The visual part.  I used the keying transistor from the Lil Slugger to drive a super bright green LED from LighthouseLEDs.  I had in my DR junk box the parabolic mirror from an old car spotlight (the kind you'd plug into the cigarette lighter).  That mirror became the mount fot the LED.  Before I got the thing going this year, I had to remove some of the window coating that keeps the UV out of the house.  Unfortunately it was also keeping some of my beacon's photons IN.  It had to go.  I used my wife'd hair dryer to take the coating off.  As you can see, the visual beacon is now really bright.  So far, only one neighbor has noticed the green flashing light.  So far, we have heard from no ships at sea.  But we are hopeful.  Pete N6QW warns of possible cruise missiles.  I am prepared to live dangerously.  

This video shows the set up from inside the shack, during the daytime: 

The ten meter beacon has been doing well and is showing up on the Reverse Beacon Netwok (K1RA and NU4F).  I will improve the antenna and this should strengthen the signal even further.