Nightfire Electronics

Some interesting items in their catalog.  I ordered their NP0 capacitor kit.   I have to stock up in order to avoid being forced into the digital oscillator morass. 

http://vakits.com/about-nightfire-electronics

They also have crystals for the ham frequencies.  

Please tell them that SolderSmoke sent you. 

WB8VGE on QSO Today -- QRP, HB, Boatanchors, Drift, Solar Power

Eric 4Z1UG has a really good interview with Mike Bryce, WB8VGE. 

Listen here: 

https://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/WB8VGE

I've been a big fan of Mike's for many years. I've talked to him on the air a couple of times.  I liked his QRP column in 73 magazine.  I share his enthusiasm for Boatanchor rigs.  He is a fellow member of the QRP Hall of Fame (who, like Pete and me, at times seems to be pushing the QRO envelope).  I like his approach to solar power. He too has been bothered by appliance ops who complain that his boatanchor rigs are 150 hertz "too low."  

His attitude toward contesting is similar to mine -- I may be more opposed than he is.  I think contesting encourages a kind of harshness and competitiveness that runs contrary to the spirit of the Radio Amateur's code. 

I got a chuckle about Mike's claim that he almost Worked All States in RECEIVED Official Observer reports. And that he at one point owned THIRTY  104s.  

Mike's observations on the dumbing down of ham radio and on the social (psychological?) problems of 75 meters ("net starting in 5 minutes!"  "QRP not allowed on 75") are sadly on the mark. 

Mike's hint about using a white-out pen to spruce up the front panel of an old Drake radio adds a new household/office material to our rig-fixing arsenal. 

Eric's comment on the Lafayette Catalog resonated with me.  I used to read it too. 

I hope Mike decides to get on the air more frequently.  Just avoid 75 meters and 7.200 MHz Mike. 

AI and Machine Learning Detect Fast Radio Bursts

KD4PBJ's PTO "Turtle" Receiver

Gents,

Here’s my newest creation. 

It’s a PTO tuned receiver for 40 meters and uses the WA6OTP PTO circuit I built a couple years back. I believe I had sent you a picture of it then. I bought the tuning assembly from him which is the aluminum bracket, acrylic tube fitted with Pem nut, and brass screw.  The circuit uses a J310 as oscillator transistor and several bipolar transistors for amplification and buffering. 

This feeds a ADE-1 mixer, mounted on a little breakout board I bought from RfBay. 

Years ago I had good luck building the Rock Bending Receiver from the ARRL handbook, so I took the audio chain from it and incorporated it. It uses a TL072 and a LM 386. 

As of now I haven’t needed any kind of front end filter, but am working on a 40 meter bandpass filter from Hans Summers that I will put on the input just in case it’s ever needed. 

I had been looking for an easy enclosure and found this in one of the break rooms at work. An empty Christmas nut tin. 

The PTO screw goes in and out like a turtle sticking its head out of the shell, plus my 13 year old son Alex’s favorite animal is a turtle. So it goes. 

Chris 

KD4PBJ

N2CQR Wins a Contest AGAIN!

Pete N6QW suggested I do a blog post on this.  

This past weekend I dusted off my old scratch-built, all-analog, no-chips BITX20. (THREE CHEERS FOR FARHAN AND HIS BITX DESIGN!)   I hooked it up to my trusty CCI .1KW (note decimal point) amplifier and my new 135 foot store-bought doublet.  This all happened just as the Worked All Europe  DX contest was kicking off, with lots of activity on 20.   TRGHS.  I was in.  My contest operating style was in the category of "relaxed-casual-noncompetitive." I took a lot of breaks.  In fact there were more breaks than non-breaks. You have to pace yourself in the contest world.  

My results: 

8 SEPT: DF0HQ, SN7D, GM6X, DP6A, S51A, DL0HN, DB0HX, OZ5E, DJ5MW, HG7T, IK4UPB, VY2ZM, G6XX, EF1A, LZ5R, 9A5W, YP0C, F6HQP, DL7ON, HB9DQL, ON6NL, DA0WRTC,  9 SEPT: EI7M, P3X, RU1A, DP7D, SP2KPD, DL0WW.

P3X might not count because, you see, Cyprus is considered to be in ASIA.  Really? 

Anyway, I 'm assuming that I am the winner in the homebrew, discrete component , all-analog transceiver category.  Woo Hoo!  

The contest rig is pictured above.  Before you point to the glowing numerals and cry foul, realize that the little Altoids box between the two speakers holds a San Jian frequency counter that was deliberately kept OUTSIDE the BITX box.  So it is more of an outboard accessory.  I can run the BITX 20 without the digital assist -- I have an old fashioned non-digital dial pointer to indicate frequency.  The "Low - High" switch you see switches the VFO from the low portion of the 20 meter phone band to the higher part of the band.   The box below the BITX 20 holds the uBITX. 

Seriously though, I was quite pleased with the performance of the doublet.   

EF Johnson's 50th Anniversary Speech. Very nice radio history

Thanks to W0VLZ for this wonderful 13 minute recording of Edgar F Johnson's 50th Anniversary speech.  There is a lot of great radio history in this speech.  Highly recommended. 

Just click here to listen: 

https://www.prismnet.com/~nielw/EFJohnson/EFJ50thTalk.wav

EF Johnson's hometown bio: 

http://www.wasecaalums.com/public/389.cfm

Ralph AB1OP -- A New Receiver (with Mojo) and A New Acronym (with Attitude)

Bill and Pete,

😀 Completed the wiring the LBS Part I (pics attached)

I've said wiring completed but, it's not really done. lt will need some peakin' & tweakin' and I already have made design changes to the power board. 

My Summer Project took ALL Summer, had the usual excuses with Summer activities, family obligations,  interruptions and days of just plain goldbricking. 

At last all the LBS Part I boards were laid out, etched, populated, soldered and installed.  As a novice Toroid winder it took a  while to get the toroids done. (I had to do THREE DBM Transformers to get two  to match.)

Some features of note: 

1. Extensive use of the recycle bin for front / rear panels and feet. (Tin can and bottle caps) Go Green!

2. Extra Mojo was induced with using the 10K pot Farhan supplied with my first Bitx40 Kit that I did not use, (I replaced it because I could not find knobs for 4mm shafts back then)  

3. Junk box speaker (8 Ohm - 0.5 W) from a cheap radio alarm clock my Mom threw away after it stopped working.

4. Use of the RG405 coax for interstage RF connections. (No Murphy's Whiskers)

😞 My tale of woe. Apparently after connecting the LBS Part I stages together I put the AD9850 module back in it's socket upside down --- then applied power,  Awaiting the replacement. HIHI

😜 SITB or Stick-It-To-Bezos.  Again this month my Ham stuff budget was blown on an Amazon order (replacement AD9850 modules being not cheap anymore). I started at the soldersmoke blog web page search bar so there should be a little something heading to your North Virginia QTH from Jeff.

73,

AB1OP_Ralph

SolderSmoke Podcast #206 -- GQRP CONVENTION SPECIAL EDITION

SolderSmoke Podcast #206 is now available: 

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke206.mp3

-- SolderSmoke resumes after a busy summer.

-- We did a portion of #206 via Skype at the GQRP Convention.  Thanks to Steve G0FUW for setting this up.  A portion of our participation appears at the end of the podcast. 

-- Pete's SDR Rig and his new involvement with WSPR and FT-8

-- The allure of SDR and the pitfalls of complexity. 

-- Bill's 135 foot Doublet, 75 AM, 60 USB and 30 Meter CW. 

-- Plans to change the IF of Bill's HRO dial receiver. 

-- Thinking (again) about sold stateing the HW-101. 

--  Hans Summers, QCX and QSX rigs.  

MAILBAG: 

Ralph builds Pete's LBS receiver.  FB!  

Lasers. Big Scary Lasers. And a guy with THE KNACK

Here is another young fellow who shows all the signs of having "The Knack." I think his findings would be very useful for those involved in light beam communication. 

Arduino Gets Command Line Interface

Will this make it easier to put programs into the the Arduino?   Will this resolve the problems we've had when using an updated Arduino IDE with code developed in an earlier version of the IDE?

https://hackaday.com/2018/08/26/arduino-gets-command-line-interface-tools-that-let-you-skip-the-ide/

More Homebrew Wisdom from Frank Harris, K0IYE

In Chapter 13A, Frank Harris writes: 

The Vanishing Art 

The 1986 ARRL Amateur Radio Handbook reported that hardly anyone was building homebrew ham receivers....  Out of hundreds of contacts, so far I’ve worked four guys, George, K7DU, Mike, NØMF, Biz, WDØHCO and Jack, W7QQQ who were using homebrew receivers for the QSO. Three of these receivers were made from vacuum tubes. George's receiver is a beautifully crafted instrument that looks like a commercial design from 50 years ago. All of these receivers had no trouble hearing me on 40 meter CW. I talked to one other fellow, Gil, N1FED who told me he had just finished a vacuum tube receiver. Unfortunately, it was performing so poorly he was still using his modern transceiver on the air. Gil told me he didn’t like transistors. I guess he found printed circuit boards and those pesky oscillations too much trouble. In spite of this pessimism, you CAN build transistorized receivers that work reasonably well. I built mine because I was intrigued by mysterious circuits like “balanced mixers,” “product detectors,” “cascode amplifiers” and “crystal ladder filters.” Before this project, I could recite the purposes of these circuits, but I had no “feel” for how they worked and why receivers are designed the way they are. What better way to learn than to build one? 

Aside from the need to shield circuit blocks from one another, a homebrew receiver with a single big board full of discrete components has another problem. If you build the whole thing at once without buying a kit and pre-cut board, I guarantee it won’t work. To make homebrew stuff that works, you have to develop your own technology based on parts you can get and circuits you understand. Learning to think this way was difficult for me. Rather than “building a receiver,” I had to lower my sights and build one circuit at a time, e.g., “an oscillator,” “a mixer,” “an audio amplifier,” etc. Then I put the blocks together to complete my project. Some of these circuit blocks didn’t work the first time so I had to build a new block. There were various reasons the modules didn’t work. Usually, I wasn’t able to buy the exact parts used in the circuits I was copying. Or my craftsmanship or shielding wasn’t adequate. Sometimes I never did learn why one version of a circuit block was superior to another. By building my receiver using separate little shielded modules for each circuit block, I could replace a circuit block whenever I managed to build an improved version. Otherwise, I would have ruined the entire big board.

On rare occasions my circuits didn’t work because there were errors in circuit diagrams in QST magazine or in the handbooks. I found some serious errors in my 1979 ARRL Handbook and a minor one in my 1998 edition. Perfect editing is not possible, so we shouldn’t expect it.

GET THE WHOLE BOOK HERE (FREE!) 
http://www.qsl.net/k0iye/

Big New Telescopes

https://qz.com/1362650/the-latest-in-a-new-generation-of-giant-telescopes-broke-ground/