An Especially Good (Old) SolderSmoke Podcast

February 22, 2008    

-- We were in Rome.  

-- I read a 1931 QST ad sent to me by my fellow "Hambassador" David Cowhig, WA1LBP; David was in Okinawa when he sent it. 

-- I describe Wes Hayward's comments about Pat Hawker, G3VA. 

-- I talk about getting on the air with my HW-8 (after fixing it!), re-tubing my Drake 2-B, and putting up a 30AWG antenna in Rome. 

-- I describe meeting up with Roman hams (including amplifier manufacturer I0ZY!) and visiting the local radio club.

-- The Science Museum in Florence, Italy. 

-- DSB from Rome with my NE602 rig. 

-- Tony Fishpool and Graham Firth's Test Gear book. 

-- An important corollary to Murphy's Law. 

-- Listening to SolderSmoke from safari, under the Southern Cross in South Africa. 

-- Ron Sparks calls in from Dubai. 

You can put on a playlist of all the SolderSmoke podcasts here: 

(12) Videos of the SolderSmoke Podcast - YouTube

 

Old Smoke: SolderSmoke's Early Theme Music from W8MOJ, Boatanchors in South Africa, and Homebrewing in Dubai

Over on the SoulderSmoke YouTube channel I have been putting up some podcasts from days-gone-by.  Recently they have been from our last days in London and our earliest days in Rome.  We have had a nice series that includes "Echo-calls" from Andy ZS6ADY  in South Africa, talking about old tube radios (Boatanchors) in that country.   Soon we will start a series that includes Echo-calls with Ron Sparks AG5RS, who was homebrewing in Dubai. 

But these early podcasts begin and end with some very distinctive techno-music from Mark O Johnson, W8MOJ.   Here is our old blog post that describes Mark's musical contribution to SolderSmoke.  Thanks Mark!  https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2011/01/tech-details-on-soldersmokes-theme.html

A Swedish Homebrew uBITX built in Dubai

It was great to get an update from Martin.  He has moved his workshop from Dubai back to Sweden.  We have seen lots of homebrew BITX monobanders, but very few homebrew multiband uBITXs.  Check out Martin's.  Very FB.   The input from Farhan was very cool, as was Martin's wise decision to follow Farhan's suggestion and to pause construction once the receiver was working.  As Martin put it, "I halted the build for a couple of days and just enjoyed listening."  Thanks for the update Martin. 

Dear Bill and Pete,

Here comes a long overdue update from my workbench, my last update was back in March 2017 when I had completed my first transceiver project.

http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2017/03/fb-ibew-hb-dc-cw-de-uae-a65dcs.html

I did not stop building and quite soon after I completed the CW transceiver Farhan posted the first schematics of the uBitx, why not? Why not get into a multiband CW-SSB transceiver as my next project.

After completing the receive part I was amazed... 

I halted the build for a couple of days and just enjoyed listening.

When it was time to start on the filters and the main RF Amp I sent Farhan an email asking about the way forward, he responded like this on May 17th 2017

"martin,

first, let me congratulate you, i suppose you are the first one to build a ubitx after me! second, i am not happy at all with the transmit line up, the drivers were not doing a good job above 14 mhz. i have replaced the 2n2219s with parallel 2n3904s. i also had to add two more LPFs, for proper harmonic suppression. i am headed for dayton today. once in dayton, i will try to find time to send you the latest circuit diagram. 

once again, congratulations on a wonderfully constructed ubitx."

Wow, what a shot in the arm for a fairly new home brewer!!! I was now back full speed with solder melting. I completed the filter bank and the RF amp, this is where I am starting to move away from the published diagram, I believe it is good to make it your own a little.

The end result was great, I worked many many stations in Europe and Asia with this little machine both SSB and CW.

In 2019 we decided to move back to Europe, the workbench and all boxes with parts and junk together with the rest of the household found their way into a 40ft container and was sent of to Sweden.

The A65DC Laboratories became SM0P Laboratories, the iron is still always hot and there is something brewing here all the time.

Thanks for a brilliant show boys,

Martin SM0P

Pico-Sats, Texas, Dubai, Balloons

Our man in Dubai, Ron Sparks, AG5RS, sent in this very interesting report on the very small satellites. Obviously lots of QRP relevance here:

Hi Bill,

I am attaching some news you may find interesting. If you remember last year I did an echolink => IRLP => 2m linkup to make QSLs on the Balloon Launch (BLT-24). Besides the usual repeater and video gear, we also had an interesting "hitchhiker" on the payload.

It was the functional engineering model of the BEVO-1 picosat. You can see pictures of the model and the balloon payload here:

http://www.w5acm.net/b24.html

This unit sent beacon information during the balloon launch and we tested it environmentally by doing so. Data on the sat itself is at:

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/06/09/picosatellite/

A sister satellite was being prepared by my alma mater, Texas A&M, who then docked their sat with the UT sat and put them on the Shuttle mission STS-127. Photos are here:

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hamradio/je9pel/dragonst.htm

All of this is part of NASAs DRAGONsat program. This is a new GPS system being developed by NASA.

I know that the satellite stuff is a little "far afield" for Soldersmoke, but you might find the connection to the Houston balloon community interesting. Those of us who get together and annually launch the balloon are without question Soldersmoke-ers with chronic cases of "the knack". It is fun for me to see that actually be useful toward a next generation replacement for GPS satellites.

All the best.
73 from Dubai, Ron AG5RS and A65BQ

AG5RS works Texas Balloon BLT-24 from Dubai

Payload Master Mike WA5TWT and the main payload for BLT-24

From our man in Dubai, Ron Sparks, AG5RS:

Hi Bill,

Yesterday was the annual South Texas Balloon Launch Team launch BLT-24. It went quite well and I was able to participate even from Dubai. This year they got an IRLP to Echolink to Repeater hookup going and I was able to Echolink to that ground repeater, then do a QSO across the balloon crossband repeater. So my signal went by "the tubes" all the way to Clear Lake Texas, then by radio wave up to the balloon at 90,000 feet and back down to everyone in about a 300 mile circle of Texas. Pretty neat. At the same time I monitored the APRS packets coming out of the balloon via the APRS web page in Finland, so I was able to have a map on the screen with real time GPS data from the balloon while I was making the QSO.

You have really bitten me with the QRSS bug and I want to build a beacon to carry up to A61Q's house and install. Sadly I don't know where to get any components here in the UAE (Soldersmoke listeners might know where to point me for local purchases?). So, I am putting together a "Bill of Materials" and will order it from Mouser in the US and have it shipped to me. I just know Murphy will probably cause me to miss one resistor or something and then have to wait another two weeks and pay for that much more cardboard to be shipped -- sigh.

All the best.

73, Ron, AG5RS
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Ron also asks if anyone has any advice on how a foreigner might get a ham license in Dubai.