https://hackaday.com/2021/12/11/has-diy-become-click-and-buy/
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Sunday, December 12, 2021
Hack-a-Day: Has DIY become Click-and-Buy?
Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Farhan's Amazing Knack Story: From a Boyhood SW Receiver to the Design of the sBITX SDR
-- Farhan talks about his practice of taking the pictures of new rigs with the new rig sitting atop the book that was most important in its design and construction. FB.
-- I was really blown away by Farhan's presentation of how the uBITX advertisement was inspired by and in many ways based on the Heathkit ad for an HW-101. Amazing.
-- I learned a lot from Farhan's discussion of SDR theory. I pledge to spend more time with this. I really like Farhan's hybrid HDR/SDR approach.
-- But I have a question: Farhan seems to say that we'd need a big expensive GOOGL computer to do the direct sampling HF SDR. But doesn't the little RTL-SDR do just that? Without a GOOGL?
-- Great to see Wes's AFTIA being used in the sBITX.
-- Really cool that Farhan has his mind on VHF transverters when designing the sBITX. I liked use of the TCXO module to free up one of the Si5351 clock outputs. FB. And great to include an idea from Hans in this rig.
Thanks very much to Farhan (who stayed up until 3 am to do this!) and to the RSGB for hosting.
Monday, August 9, 2021
Mythbuster Video #15 The Mythbuster Signal As Seen in the NA5B WebSDR
Friday, August 6, 2021
Friday, July 30, 2021
Video: Rob Sherwood NC0B on Transceiver (and Especially Transmitter) Performance
Rob Sherwood NC0B is one of the real authorities on receiver performance. Many of us have relied on his ratings of commercial receivers for many years. His recent presentation to the Madison DX Club has a lot of really interesting information. There is also, I think, some stuff that homebrewers will find distressing.
Just some things that I noticed:
-- Rob mentioned a move back to 9 MHz IF filters and a move away from dual-conversion rigs with a high IF. He also mentioned the combination of a 9 MHz IF and a 5 MHz VFO as a way of easily getting on both 75 and 20 meters.
-- Rob discussed phase noise from synthesizers, a topic we discussed at length (some would say ad nauseum!) a year or so ago.
-- Rob really praised the "Pure Signal" system of one of the SDR manufacturers. He showed the completely rectangular waterfall display of a Pure Signal transmitter. I'm afraid that simple crystal rigs might never live up to this standard. An embrace of this high standard could discourage the construction of simpler, HDR rigs. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good!
-- We often hear SSB ops complaining that some other SSB op is "splattering all over the band." It often turns out that what is really happening is that a clean SSB signal is just overloading the receiver of an operator who does not know how to turn off his pre-amp or turn on an attenuator. Rob shows us how to really know if the problem is in fact at the other end: He looks at key clicks from two different CW signals on 160 meters. Both are at roughly the same level in his receiver But one is clicking all over the place while the other is not. With this kind of comparative info, we can be sure that the problem is the transmitting station's fault.
-- In discussing when to turn on the pre-amp (or the attenuator) Rob revives the old practice of just listening to the band noise. If you can hear the band noise when you switch from dummy load to receive antenna, you have enough RF gain. Adding more will only make things worse.
-- There was an interesting question about how to evaluate the performance of receivers when there are many signals inside the receiver's passband. This is the case with FT-8. Rob said this situation needs more research.
I don't mean to be critical here -- Rob is the guy who evaluated commercial rigs. And he is a contester. So his presentation is, of necessity, going to have a very "appliance operator" orientation. There seems to be an assumption that the only "rigs" that modern hams can use are commercial products. At one point Rob admits that most hams just can't repair these rigs. There is much for homebrewers to learn from experts like Rob, but presentations like this also remind us of what a tiny minority we really are, and how most hams have moved completely away from the old ham tradition of building our own rigs.
Thanks to Rob Sherwood and the Madison DX Club. And thanks to EI7GL for alerting us to this important presentation.
Friday, May 28, 2021
Farhan's sBITX -- Combining SDR with the Traditional Superhet
Saturday, May 15, 2021
SolderSmoke Podcast #230 is available! Apr 1, Mars, Group Build, SDR, SSB, Mich Mighty Mites, Mailbag
SolderSmoke Podcast #230 is available for download
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke230.mp3
Sunday, April 4, 2021
A Satellite Ground Station (Receiver) Made from Junk
Monday, March 29, 2021
"Analog Man in a Digital World" by OM Joe Walsh (music video)
Monday, March 22, 2021
My Hodgepodged Morse: Audio Tone into the Mic Jack Creates J2A not A1A. BASTA!
Don, ND6T
--------------------------------------------------
Hi Bill and Pete,
With putting an audio oscillator into you hodgepodge radio, your transmission is not the same as a standard CW rig.
If we have a transmitter as described in the ARRL handbooks from the 1940's or 1950's, (or even the Michigan Mighty Mite) it is a crystal oscillator and maybe a PA tube. By keying either the oscillator and/or the final PA on and off, then we can send Morse code as ICW Interrupted Continues Wave. If we check the list of emission designators, we have A1A.
However, if we feed a tone into a SSB transmitter, then we have J2A.
At the other end it may sound the same, but because it is created in a different way, it has a different designation.
A quick look at Part 97 shows that J2A and J2B are classed as CW, so you are in the clear. However, if you put a tone oscillator into an AM signal to send CW, then that would be classed as A2A and not classed as CW, but as MCW. MCW can be used on 6 meters and above, but not HF.
SITS.
73 de Peter VK2EMU
-----------------------------------------------------------
So I say BASTA with the J2A! If I want to go CW, it's all A1A for me. I dusted off my Fish Soup 10 and am now back on 40 CW with 200 mW.... A1A all the way!
Saturday, March 20, 2021
SolderSmoke Podcast #229 -- G2NJ Trophy, SDR, HDR, CW! Mailbag
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke229.mp3
-- G2NJ Trophy is awarded to Pete Juliano, N6QW.
-- Get your vaccine shot as soon as you can!
-- More from "Conquering the Electron" by Derek Cheung.
-- Bad fire in the chip factory. Such a shame. Sad! I had NOTHING to do with it. I was home that day. I can prove it.
-- Bezos is not such a bad guy. Turns out he is a space-geek.
-- Perseverance was the big space news. Very cool.
Pete's bench:
Raspberry Pi vs.
Microcontrollers
Treedix display
Conversion of the Dentron Scout
CW rigs?
6L6 on a wooden chassis
SHAMELESS COMMERCE DIVISION-
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Bill's bench:
Hodgepodge:
-- BITX40
Module.
-- Ramseykit
Amp.
-- San Jian
counter,
-- CW using 750 Hz
oscillator.
-- RF-actuated piezo
buzzer.
-- SDR! SDR using PC and tablet.
-- Checking the output
with SDR.
-- Moving the carrier
osc frequency.
Also, I put the Fish Soup 10 back on the air. Nice contacts under 200 mw.
Up next: A rig for 80/75 and 20 meters. Single Conversion. Using VFO from a Yaesu FT101 that runs 8.7 – 9.2 Mhz. Quiz question: What IF should I use?
MAILBAG
Mark Zelesky sent me wood tokens with power and Ohm's law formulae. Thanks!
Scott WA9WFA Built a
really nice Mate for Mighty Midget RX – getting it going!
Tryg EI7CLB found
board of his George Dobbs Ladybird RX.
Rebuild it OM!
Tom WX2J – We talked
about “No lids, no kids, no space cadets” nastiness.
Nick M0NTV about
sideband inversion. I like the simple
rule about subtraction.
Jonathan M0JGH – Always listen to Pete. Got married, has mixing product. Leo?
Mike AE0IH. Dad used a BC-348 in the service. Looking for
one. FB.
Adam N0ZIB – “Silent
Shep” site --- with some ham radio shows I had not seen.
Walter KA4KXX in
Orlando has a similar subtraction problem with San Jian counter.
Bill N5ALO sent me a
really nice KLH speaker. I’m using it
now.
Jason N2NLY –
interested in building SSB transceiver.
One step at a time OM…
Trevor in Annapolis
sent xcsd cartoon that really hit home.
Farhan is doing OK in
India, diligently protecting his family from the virus.
Peter VK2EMU also
doing well.
Dave AA7EE Casually
killed a DC receiver in Hollywood, and disposed of the remains.
Charlie ZL2CTM doing
great things with simple SSB. Blogpost.
Phil VK8MC in Darwin sends article on "Mend not End" battle against planned obsolescence.
Bob KY3R re my SDR adventures, asked if I’ve had a recent medical/psychiatric evaluation.
Friday, March 19, 2021
Hodgepodge: Tablet SDR with a Bluetooth Mouse (video)
Thursday, March 11, 2021
Hodgepodge: Moving the Carrier Oscillator Frequency (and a Flashback to 2002) (Video)
Now it was time for some debugging and
fine tuning. I needed to make sure that
the frequency of the carrier oscillator was in the right spot relative to the
passband of the crystal filter. If it
was set too high, the filter would be chopping off high notes in my voice that
were needed for communications clarity, and it would allow too much of what
remained of the carrier (residuals from the balance modulator) through. If it
was set too low, the voice signal transmitted would be lacking needed base
notes. I didn’t have the test gear
needed to perform this adjustment properly, but my friend Rolf, SM4FQW, up in
One night, during a conversation with Rolf, I explained my problem and he offered to help me make the adjustments… by ear. Performing an electronic version of open-heart surgery, with power on and Rolf on frequency, I opened the case of the new transmitter. The carrier oscillator has a small capacitor that allows the frequency of the crystal to be moved slightly. With Rolf listening carefully, I would take my screwdriver and give that little capacitor a quarter turn to the right. “Better or worse?” I would ask.
I think this little adjustment session
captures much of the allure of ham radio.
There I was, out in the
Sunday, March 7, 2021
EXORCISM! 40 Meter RFI Problem Resolved
David W. suggested I use my RTL-SDR dongle to look for the source of the 40 meter RFI that I have been mentioning. (It appears as an ugly stipe in the waterfall of my Hodgepodge transceiver.) So I fired up the RTL-SDR -- there were the tell-tale spikes, spaced neatly every 50 kHz. The ARRL Handbook says this is typical of a switched power supply. Before I started patrolling the neighborhood with a tin-foil hat and a portable receiver, I decided to check my own house for any recently installed electronic devices. It didn't take long -- when I unplugged the new (mid-pandemic) treadmill the spikes disappeared. This treadmill was located about ten feet above my rigs, and between the rigs and the antenna. Duh. I should have thought of this earlier. Mystery solved. Thanks David.
Friday, March 5, 2021
Over the Waterfall into the Dark Side: Hodgepodge SDR
Saturday, February 20, 2021
A Step Closer to the Elser-Mathes Cup? Ham Receives Signals from Mars
Monday, February 8, 2021
A Quantum Mechanics-based Receiver. The Rydberg Detector
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
SolderSmoke Podcast #228
Of course, no travel.
But vaccines are here so maybe soon we can leave our shacks.
In the meantime:
I’ve been playing chess against AI bots on chess.com.
Netflix recommendation: The Bureau. From France. A review from NPR:
A reading from "Conquering the Electron." Germanium vs. Silicon.
Bill’s Bench:
The KLH Model Twenty-one II.
Acoustical Suspension. First receiver
WITH A PILLOW! Bad speaker? Blown AF amp
finals. Hot heat sink. VBE Multiplier. Desitin.
Tony Fishpool’s recommended LM386 boards. 10 for 11 bucks. Nice. They
work. Pictured in the Amazon ad at the
upper right of the SolderSmoke blog page.
Putting a digital display on the Lafayette HA-600A
Test gear trouble. My
Radio Shack multimeter getting flaky. I
many need something better. Auto
ranging? My beloved Maplin AF generator died – will have to fix. I need that
thing. Probably a bad chip. Good thing they are socketed.
I almost forgot about SKN!
But I remembered and I made one contact with the HT-37 and Drake 2-B.
Pete’s Bench:
Presentation to RSGB on Homebrew.
TenTek Troubleshoot.
Swan 240? Looking
nice.
SDR adventures.
MAILBAG
Bill N8ET sent me some really nice Showa 9 MHz 8 pole
crystal filters.
Kevin AA7YQ Smoke jumper!
Building a hybrid SDR.HDR rig.
Launched blog. FB
Nick M0NTV working on similar HDR/SDR project. Great video.
Grayson KJ7UM Hollow State Design – Launched a new
blog. Very FB!
Thomas K4SWL of SWL Post blog. Kearsarge Mountain Transmission system. And recent events.
Peter VK2EMU Poetry.
CW poetry.
Pete WB9FLW looking at DSB rigs…
Drew N7DA Feels not
like a real ham because he hasn’t built a quad from bamboo. Which type of
landscape bamboo is best for antennas?
Ryan Flowers of MiscDotGeek.Com blog is also watching the
Tally Ho YouTube videos of Leo Sampson. Wants to put a WSPR beacon on the Tally
Ho.
Joe KF5OWY Working
with diode ring mixers, trying to see the mixer action on his ‘scope. 1 and -1!
Jim AB9CN sent a cool idea about how to do a 20/17 Moxon.
Roy GM4VKI – I thanked him for his article in SPRAT about
putting a 2n3904 on the output of an NE602 10P mod. Brilliant.
Roger Hayward Told him that I really liked his Dad’s recent
web site updates.
Farhan – Jokingly cursed me for showing him the Oscillodyne
regen of Hugo Gernsback and Jean Shepherd. “Now I will have to build this!”
Friday, January 22, 2021
Jenny List's Favo(u)rite Things
Over on Hack-A-Day Jenny List (G7CKF) has a really nice article about ham radio and homebrewing. She truly has The Knack: She got her start in radio electronics at age 9 when her parents gave her George Dobbs's Ladybird book.
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/a-few-of-my-favorite-things-amateur-radio/
One of her paragraphs really seemed to capture the SDR-HDR conflict that we so often joke about:
The age of the homebrew RF tinkerer may be at a close, at least in the manner in which I started it. Nobody at the cutting edge of radio is likely to be messing around with discrete transistor circuits in the 2020s, unless perhaps they are working with extremely exotic devices up in the millimetre wavelengths. It’s all software-defined radios, opaque black plastic boxes that deliver a useful radio experience on a computer but that’s it. No more homebrew, no more tinkering.
Whew, good thing I'm not on the cutting edge. It sounds kind of sad. Oh well, that leaves more discrete transistors for us to tinker with.
Jenny's Profile on Hack-A-Day:
[Jenny List]: Contributing Editor and European Correspondent
Jenny List trained as an electronic engineer but spent twenty years in the publishing industry working on everything from computer games to
dictionaries before breaking out and returning to her roots.
She grew up around her parents’ small farm and blacksmith business in rural England, so making (and breaking) things is in her blood. Countless projects have crossed her bench over the years, though these days you’ll find her working with electronics and in particular radio, textiles for clothing and costume, decrepit classic cars, and real cider from first principles.
When she’s not writing for Hackaday she works on language corpus analysis software, designs and sells amateur radio kits, sits on the board of Oxford Hackspace, and is a freelance electronic design engineer and programmer.
- Hackaday Articles
- Hackaday Profile: Jenny List
- Twitter: @Jenny_Alto
- Personal Website: Language Spy
Monday, January 18, 2021
Kevin AA7YQ (Montana Smoke Jumper) Launches his SDR/HDR Build Blog
Thanks Kevin.