I've been interested in the Solomon islands lately because my wife and I have been watching a YouTube video channel about a family living on Uepi island:
There are WWII remnants still visible (underwater) at Uepi:
AI Overview
Uepi Island in the Solomon Islands is famous today for its World War II history, particularly its abundant, accessible WWII wreck dives (aircraft & ships) in Marovo Lagoon, a key battleground during the Solomon Islands Campaign, offering divers a tangible connection to the fierce fighting between US and Japanese forces. The area, near major WWII sites like Guadalcanal, features underwater artifacts like Japanese Zeroes and US Corsairs, with the modern Uepi Island Resort preserving these historical relics within its dive operations.
Uepi's WWII Significance
Location: Uepi is situated in the Marovo Lagoon, part of the Solomon Islands, which were central to the brutal Pacific Campaign of WWII.
Wreck Dives: The waters surrounding Uepi are a "treasure trove" of sunken WWII aircraft (like P39 Air Cobra, Japanese Zeroes) and shipwrecks, making it a prime destination for historical diving.
Preservation: The Uepi Island Resort actively manages and promotes responsible diving at these sites, emphasizing that removing artifacts is illegal.
Key WWII Sites & Wrecks Near Uepi
Wickham Harbour: Located near Uepi, this area contains significant WWII wrecks, accessible via boat trips from the island.
Aircraft: Divers can find Japanese Zeroes, American Corsair fighters, and potentially B24 bombers, often in challenging conditions, with efforts to move some to cleaner areas.
Marovo Lagoon: As one of the world's largest saltwater lagoons, it holds numerous historical remnants from the intense fighting.
A short time ago Paul VK3HN told us about the term bricolage. It seemed to capture much of the homebrew spirit. This morning I heard Van Neistat's video-cast (also something that came to me from Paul VK3HN) talking about the related term "bricoleur." His video (above) also has some great workshop ideas.
MacGyver is a television series in which the protagonist is the paragon of a bricoleur,[28] creating solutions for the problem to be solved out of immediately available found objects.
First off, what a great name. It is a real ham radio name. Grote Reber. And he was indeed a ham: W9GFZ. We don't have names like that anymore. But we should.
Second, Grote Reber's mother was also the teacher of Edwin Hubble. Hubble was the guy who discovered that there were OTHER GALAXIES in the universe, and that they were all moving away from each other. That was a BIG discovery! Later, Grote's mom also had her son in her class. Both students were from Wheaton, Illinois.
Lest there be any doubt about Grote's dedication to radio, consider the following. (Much of the following comes from Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Reber)
When he learned of Karl Jansky's work in 1933,[5][6][7] Grote Reber decided this was the field he wanted to work in, and applied to Bell Labs, where Jansky was working.
In the summer of 1937, Reber decided to build his own radio telescope in his back yard in Wheaton, Illinois. Reber's radio telescope was considerably more advanced than Jansky's, and consisted of a parabolic sheet metal dish 9 meters in diameter, focusing to a radio receiver 8 meters above the dish. The entire assembly was mounted on a tilting stand, allowing it to be pointed in various directions, though not turned. The telescope was completed in September 1937.[8][9]
Here is a really great article from Sky and Telescope magazine (July 1988) about Reber's homebrew radio telescope:
He was limited by the size of locally available 2X4 lumber. Neighbors thought he was trying to control the weather or to bring down enemy aircraft. Between Wheaton and the NRAO site in West Virginia, Reber's telescope spent some time at the National Bureau of Standards site in Sterling, Virginia. I was in Sterling just yesterday. I wonder if there is a plaque or something noting the telesccope's stay in that town. I note that at age 15, Reber had built a ham radio transceiver.
AND THEN HE MOVED TO TASMANIA
He did this because of propagation and low noise conditions. (This reminds me of how we sometimes said that very few people have actually said the words, "And then we moved to the Azores.")
Starting in 1951, he received generous support from the Research Corporation in New York, and moved to Hawaii.[12] In the 1950s, he wanted to return to active studies but much of the field was already filled with very large and expensive instruments. Instead he turned to a field that was being largely ignored, that of medium frequency (hectometre) radio signals in the 0.5–3 MHz range, around the AM broadcast bands. However, signals with frequencies below 30 MHz are reflected by an ionized layer in the Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere. In 1954, Reber moved to Tasmania,[12] the southernmost state of Australia, where he worked with Bill Ellis at the University of Tasmania.[13] There, on very cold, long, winter nights the ionosphere would, after many hours shielded from the Sun's radiation by the bulk of the Earth, 'quieten' and de-ionize, allowing the longer radio waves into his antenna array. Reber described this as being a "fortuitous situation". Tasmania also offered low levels of man-made radio noise, which permitted reception of the faint signals from outer space.
His Homebrew House in Tasmania
In the 1960s, he had an array of dipoles set up on the sheep grazing property of Dennistoun, about 7.5 km (5 miles) northeast of the town of Bothwell, Tasmania, where he lived in a house of his own design and construction he decided to build after he purchased a job lot of coach bolts at a local auction. He imported 4x8 douglas fir beams directly from a sawmill in Oregon, and then high technology double glazed window panes, also from the US. The bolts held the house together. The window panes formed a north facing passive solar wall, heating mat black painted, dimpled copper sheets, from which the warmed air rose by convection. The interior walls were lined with reflective rippled aluminium foil. The house was so well thermally insulated that the oven in the kitchen was nearly unusable because the heat from it, unable to escape, would raise the temperature of the room to over 50 °C (120 °F). His house was never completely finished. It was meant to have a passive heat storage device, in the form of a thermally insulated pit full of dolerite rocks, underneath, but although his mind was sharp, his body started to fail him in his later years, and he was never able to move the rocks. He was fascinated by mirrors and had at least one in every room.
To Canada -- And a Rejection of the Big Bang
The same July 1988 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine has a good historical vignette of Reber, with a focus on his actvities in Canada late in life (click on the image below). Reber had big doubts about the big bang. Unfortunately this seemed to spill over into scorn and ridicule for those who -- well -- believed in the big bang. We see this at the end of the article. Oh well, even great people sometimes get cranky.
Three cheers for Grote Reber.
I had trouble making the WayBack Machine links to work on my blog. But they seem to work on the Wiki page. So to see them, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Reber Then go to the Reference section and take a look at the second and third items.
This book is kind of weird, but give it a chance. The author seems too prone to describe the physical attributes of his colleagues, especially female colleagues. But he was born in 1910 -- he was an old guy when he wrote this book, so perhaps we should cut him some slack. And there is one memorable episode where he defends a female applicant. In spite of the shortcomings, there are many real gems in there, often hidden among the descriptions of 1930's era Kleenex machines and refrigerators. I picked up the book a long time ago and only read it recently.
Some highlights:
-- Crystal Radios in the 1920s.
-- Working Australia from Michigan on 40 CW in 1927. And waking up his parents to tell them. (Decades later, I did the same thing after a ZL contact).
-- Doing a radio propagation survey using the 5 meter band (FMLA!)
-- Jansky's discovery of an extraterrestrial hiss in 1932. (It seems like that was the big discovery, So why did Penzias get the Nobel prize?)
-- A youthful trip to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
-- A regular ham band schedule from Ann Arbor to Berkeley that featured Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer.
-- Lots of mention of Fred Terman, Grote Reber, and Karl Jansky,
-- Some discussion of how Jansky was turned down for a job. And about how being a radio amateur actually hurt chances for employment; there are a few lines about anti-ham prejudice.
-- Lots of people known to us show up in the book: Joe Taylor, Shoemaker and Levy of Shoemaker-Levy 9 fame, Arthur C. Clarke, Maarten Schmidt of "First Light," and many others.
-- And of course, the WOW signal (that has recently been explained as probably having a natural origin).
-- Kraus tells of how the Latin words "Ad Astra per Aspera" (to the stars, with difficulty) were engraved above their radio telescope receiving room. He goes on to (correctly) criticize those who write about radio telescopes, without having ever built one. Remarkinig on one such critic, John Bolton, a revered Austialian radio astronomer and radio telescope builder, wrote, "If the writer had built a radio telescope his story of radio astronomy would be a different story."
Here is a good review of Kraus's "Big Ear Two" book:
I think this one is a bit over the top. They are way too interested in the old typewirters. The artist who destroys the old machines to make robots and sculptures... the "musical group" that plays songs on old typrwriters... all the people who decry modern digital tech, but then create internet pages that save the old typewriter shops. But hey, who am I to criticize them? Some readers really liked the New York Times article on the Bremerton Typewriters Company. And there is a lot of overlap between these typrewriter fanatics and the many shades of ham radio fanaticism (boatanchor-oligists, I'm looking at you!) So here (above) is the full movie.
One personal note: My paternal grandmother was part of that original typewriter revolution - she remained proud all of her life of hwer ability to use that machine. She kept her own typewriter in her house all of her life. And she used it.
There are a LOT of YouTube videos about old typewriters and workshops that service them. Here is one about the last typewriter shop in Melbourne, Australia:
-- We are over 100 on the Direct Conversion Receiver Builds. We talked about the receiver project at the GQRP convention. Video on the blog.
-- G4 Geomagnetic storm November 11-12. Messed up my computer. Blackout in the DR?
Pete:
-- USMC Birthday. Having served alongside them they have my deepest respect. Veterans Day.
-- Think about supporting those without a job this Thanksgiving. Cash to various organizations is best.
-- 50 Hz off frequency -- What does that mean if you tune by ear and not by mouse/waterfall?
-- The Hybrid Wireless is on the air. A unique build and not often seen.
Dean:
-- Progress on the HOMEBREW MOSFET amplifier. Claude helped.
Dean's 100 watt amplifier
SHAMELESS COMMERCE DIVISION: Mostly DIY RF. Become a SolderSmoke Patron. Buy stuff from Amazon through the link on this blog (in the right side column).
Bill:
Bill's antipode from Virginia
-- VK early in the morning. Also E51MWA and FW5K. All homebrew SSB. My antipodes. VK6ACF Charley 11,629 miles. Might be my most distant station worked.
-- Camden is a 23 year-old blind ham who is looking for some homebrew help. He lives in Pleasant City, Ohio, about an hour east of Columbus. Can you help him? camden@bopp.net
-- Dave AA7EE A completely AI SolderSmoke? "Open the pod bay doors Hal."
-- Pat W3RGA heard my 1 watt HI7 beacon. Thanks Pat.
-- Patrick Voets -- A Belgian living in the Netherlands -- supports our defiant NIMCEL position!
-- Brian "Moses" Hall K8TIY, Father of Robert of "Crank it in Robert" fame. Check out the video. Young Robert appears around the 45 minute point: https://youtu.be/Xqs2Ihucr6I?t=2730
-- Will Harris KI4POV -- an esteemed homebrewer -- asks about using 75 ohm coax. I say yes, Pete tells him how to do it right.
Because my kids went to college in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I sometimes found myself asking Google Maps how long it would take to get to the radio astronomy observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. It looked close on the map, but as these two guys found out, it really was quite far away. So we never made the trip. I am glad that these guys did. See the video above.
Look, I am a former member of the SARA, the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. I am a huge fan of the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, the focal point (!) of the movie "The Dish." I also have on my shelf the book, "Big Ear Two -- Listening for Other Worlds" by John Kraus W8JK:
I have known Mike WA3O for many years -- he sent me his HW-7 QRP transceiver, which I proudly display in my shack. I have also had several contacts with VK3MO, going back to at least 2002. I ran into both of them on 20 meters from the Dominican Republic on September 2, 2025 when KX4WC/AM was flying from Chile to Panama. This was a very cool contact. WA3O made it even cooler by sending this email about his connection to Ian VK3MO. Mike writes:
On another note. VK3MO . I heard Ian talking one afternoon about Pittsburgh. After he cleared with his QSO I called him and asked about it and he said his daughter was visiting Pittsburgh to check out a university (Duquesne). So I gave him my email and phone number in case anything should arise. We met up with his daughter and took her to dinner and she and my wife went to Niagra Falls. About a year after that his daughter went to that university and on many occasions we got together for a meal and to hang out.
Ian and his wife did come to visit and we got to meet them . I also kept a morning 40 meter schedule with Ian every day. Ian has STACKED ROMBIC antennas (one at 140 ft and one at 70 ft) so he was a massive signal most days. Ian was very grateful to have us available, just in case.
His daughter is an accomplished violinist and got us tickets to the opera where she was in the orchestra.
Then Covid hit and she was just finishing finals so, we packed her up and got her to the airport before they closed the Australian boarders.
All from the brotherhood of ham radio.
73's Mike WA3O
VK3MO's 20 meter monoband array w 200 foot rotating tower
About 17 years ago, when I set up the SolderSmoke blog, I wanted three columns. Google Blogger/Blogspot didn't seem to have one, so I expanded my search. I ended up using an external (to blogspot) template. All was well until recently the SolderSmoke blog started to look kind of strange.
I consulted with Peter VK3TPM. He looked at the code and concluded that it was probably a problem with the external template. He suggested just changing the template to one that is provided by Google Blogspot. I didn't want to get into a lot of digital troubleshooting and fruitless calls to help lines, so that is what I did.
The new template seems to work well. There are (kind of) three columns. I kept most of the widgets from the old blog. I cleaned it up a bit. I think it looks pretty good.
One of the first articles that I put on this blog was an NA5N post about the SA-612 -- this was originally posted on December 2, 2006: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2009/06/na5n-on-ne602.html Today our friend Paul VK3HN today noted the end of production. The SA-612 is no longer being produced, but it is not forgotten, and there are a lot of them still around. Thanks Paul.
One thing I would add: It took me a while to get my head around the Gilbert Cell mixer that is the heart of the SA-612. Here is how I came to understand it:
The end of a four decade life, the NXP SA612 (in SOIC8) ceased production and the final delivery date for orders placed by the last-time-buy deadline was August 18, 2023.
The SA612 truly is a remarkable chip. It's as if The Radio Gods got together back in the early 80s and said, 'what integrated circuit can we bring into the radio world that will supercharge homebrew radio and help enthusiasts to build their own rigs?'. And after the wise council settled on a combined oscillator-mixer in a single DIP-8 package, the rest is history . The 602/612 launched dozens of DIY radios and even businesses, and the careers of the QRP pioneers, from Doug DeMaw to Wayne Burdick to Dave Benson. I'll bet even Wes Hayward built a few.
SA612 discussions on Groups.io lists such as Qrp-Tech ran for decades and continue to attract attention and raise new insights today.
Even Elecraft with all of their digital radio know-how and resources launched the KH1 hand-held CW rig into production with SA612s in its receiver as late as 2023.
It really is an almost ideal part for simple homebrew receivers and transmitters. A 200MHz mixer with balanced inputs and outputs, an on-chip stable LO that can be used in three ways - a crystal BFO, an LC (or varactor) VFO, or a buffer for an external oscillator or clock such as the si5351 digital PLL/multisynth. Up to 15dB conversion gain which mostly eliminates the need for IF gain. Able to be gain-controlled with a DC AGC applied to its input. And did I mention low current?
Its only weakness is in its mixer dynamic range and strong signal performance but if you put a basic BPF in front, for simple homebrew rigs at home or portable/field rigs, this hasn't really been a problem.
Of course there are other mixers that outperform the 612 but some consume much more current, and none have the built-in oscillator.
Vale the SA612. You served, and continue to support the homebrew community like no other chip. You will not be forgotten.
Fortuitously, eBay is full of $5 a piece NOS parts on tape, which pretty much guarantees they are not fake. And at this price, for all you get, they're still great value!
