N2HTT's MMM Makes Contacts (the little rubber feet are important)

Hi Bill and Pete,

Some further adventures of the Michigan Mighty Mite - I have added several amenities since first oscillation:

- a low pass filter on the output

- bnc connections for antenna and a rcvr, and a tx/rx switch

- coaxial connector for power

- stereo jack for the key

- LED tx power indicator, and

- little rubber feet

Of all of these, I cannot sufficiently emphasize the importance of little rubber feet. A project just cannot be considered complete without them.

More pictures and details of the low pass filter are on my blog at http://n2htt.net

I've been heard on RBN on 40m several times, but haven't gotten any replies to calling CQ. This weekend was the December SKCC Sprintathon, and I pretty conclusively proved that if there are any other signals on the band the MMM is not likely to be heard.

After the contest ended, I posted on the SKCC sked page, and two stations, KC9W and KT4TN agreed to listen for me. We made successful contacts on 7059 kHz. Both stations are in Tennessee, and coincidentally both ops are named Randy.

As Bruce KK0S observed in his report, the rig seems to operate about 1 kHz above the nominal crystal frequency, as confirmed by both Randys.

I've had a lot of fun with this little rig, it's a keeper.

Keep up the great work with the podcasts, and Happy Holidays

73

Mike N2HTT

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Larry's Mighty Mite

Larry's rig looks like it is almost ready to go for Straight Key Night!   FB.   I was glad to heat that the crystal survived the rough treatment dished out by the US Postal Service these days.  Apparently all envelopes are sent through a steam roller!  Who knew?

Hi Bill and Pete,

As usual life has intervened in my plans, but after a delay for professional and personal reasons I can now report success in yet another additional the the CLA.  I was able to successfully transmit into a dummy load yesterday with my new transmitter.  It is not the prettiest device I have ever built but it is functional.  I tried the home made mepad construction and it works fairly well.  I did discover a few things while building and testing this unit.  First, I need a new soldering iron with a little better temperature control.  Second, before using this transmitter on the air (currently on a dummy load), it needs a low pass filter.  I can see several harmonics imposed on the generated signal.

The first picture show how everything is mounted to piece of scrap wood for stability.  I even screwed down the old key for stability during testing.  The alligator clips are for the dummy load connection (the dummy load is also home built from 20, 1K ohm resistors which is located just on the right edge of the picture).  

Even without an antenna I was able to receive the transmitted signal on my IC-7200 in the shack.  

The signal on the scope is messy but the tome received on the IC-7200 sounds good.

Next steps are the additional of a Low Pass Filter and better matching to the dummy load (currently I'm only at about 49 Ohms).

Thanks again for the encouragement.  I plan to do a little more tweaking on this unit and will keep you updated on any progress.

Have a great holiday and a Happy New Year,

73

Larry

AE7TM

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Mac's Mighty Mite

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Sputnik 40 Launched from MIR in 1997

Bill,
I'm new to SolderSmoke, and have made it up to episode 135. around episode 130  you entered a "space" phase that I enjoyed. With Sputnik being mentioned, I thought I would send you a recording of Sputnik 40 that I made on November 23, 1997. I used a home made turnstile antenna and an HT.

73,
Jeff Tucker
W9TLT

Listen to Jeff's recording here: 

http://soldersmoke.com/sputnik97.wav

Sputnik 40, also known as Sputnik Jr, and Radio Sputnik 17 (RS-17), was a Franco-Russian amateur radio satellite which was launched in 1997 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. A 4-kilogram (8.8 lb) one-third scale model of Sputnik 1, Sputnik 40 was deployed from the Mir space station on 3 November 1997. Built by students, the spacecraft was constructed at the Polytechnic Laboratory of Nalchik in Kabardino-Balkaria, whilst its transmitter was assembled by Jules Reydellet College in Réunion with technical support from AMSAT-France.

Sputnik 40 was launched, along with a backup spacecraft and the X-Mir inspection satellite, aboard Progress M-36 at 15:08 UTC on 5 October 1997. A Soyuz-U carrier rocket placed the spacecraft into orbit, flying from 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan: the same launch pad used by Sputnik 1. Progress M-36 docked to Mir on 8 October, and the satellites were transferred to the space station. At 04:05 UTC on 3 November, during an extra-vehicular activity, Sputnik 40 was deployed by cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov.

On 4 November, the day after it was deployed, Sputnik 40 was in a low Earth orbit with a perigee of 376 kilometres (234 mi), an apogee of 382 kilometres (237 mi), an inclination of 51.6 degrees, and a period of 92.13 minutes.The satellite was given the International Designator 1997-058C, and was catalogued by the United States Space Command as 24958. It ceased operations on 29 December 1997 when its batteries expired, and subsequently decayed from orbit on 21 May 1998. The backup satellite remained aboard Mir, and was destroyed when Mir was deorbited on 23 March 2001.

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Jean Shepherd Meets Lee DeForest (video)

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Colin Gets His BITX Receiver Going

Pete and I congratulated Colin on the First Sigs heard by his BITX (sort of like First Light for a telescope.)  He is clearly following the advice offered by Farhan in the original BITX20 article:  Take a break when the receiver is done; sit back to enjoy the sounds of success.  I told Colin that having a small error in the build, then finding it and fixing it, well, that's icing on the cake OM.   This also shows the benefit of having an oscilloscope. Here is Colin's report:

Hi Pete and Bill,

I really enjoyed the latest SolderSmoke! I think you two have got a winning formula, humour interspersed with valuable technical knowledge. Some podcasts are just too serious, there's nothing wrong with having fun in your hobby!

Progress is slow here, as always, but each week I have managed to move a little bit further forward. This week I aligned my BITX band pass filter and made a rough measurement of my crystal filter using the DDS signal generator that I built last week.

My oscilloscope is a Tektronix 465, older than me I believe! Of course there is no fancy signal level readout like the modern digital scopes, so I had to just peak the injected signal through the crystal filter and measure the frequency using a frequency counter connected to the IF amp. I followed the BITX ver 3 build instructions and my results seemed to match very closely to the Indian kit. I'm going to set my BFO at the -20dB from peak level as suggested in the ver3 instructions, I guess I can fine tune the setting later.

At first I had no signal making it out of the last RX IF amp, I traced the signal right through to the base of the first transistor but then the signal was lost. I had thought that band conditions were poor when I tried my BITX in RX last week when in fact it turns out that I'd made a small mistake building the IF amplifier that follows the crystal filter! I had wired the 4k7 resistor in the wrong place! I made the circuit good and hey presto, lots of signal coming out of the amp!

I was eager to give the receiver another try. On Fridays work finishes at 1pm, so a great chance to try out my rig during daylight hours. I hooked up the rig to a random piece of wire and I was amazed by the great noises coming from the speaker! I hadn't even set the BFO but voices were just leaping out. Man that rig has a lot of AF gain! I obtained a switched 10k log pot which I intend to use for power on and AF gain so hopefully the volume control will be OK. As a side note, it was nice to hear HF0YOTA down in the CW portion, I'm guessing that it is youngsters on the air station, I must do a search on the call later.

73, Colin M1BUU

So the little signal generator has already earned it's keep. I guess I can would have been scratching my head for a while without it!

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Some Colorburst QRP Encouragement from ND6T

Don ND6T has been helping us come up with a good simple low pass filter for the MMM (Steve Smith and the FCC insist).    At the end of one of his e-mails, he shared this QRP Colorburst gem: 

Be prepared to be occasionally amazed. Back in the late 70's I worked all over the western U.S. with under 1/2 watt. Regularly. Even a QSO with a UA0 (Siberia) with under 1 milliwatt, he having answered my CQ! I was seeing if I could "get out" using a single "D" cell flashlight battery that was too weak for the flashlight. All using a colorburst crystal. Oh, and a dipole 100' high stretched over a creek.

 73/72,

Don      ND6T

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Fwd: CBLA is on the air

Hi Bill,     No contacts yet but it sounds good into a dummy load. HA!     My plan is to put the whole thing up at the antenna and run the keying leads into the shack. Not shown on the pill bottle cap is a 9V battery connection. At 9V I get about 100mW out. With out the LPF and using 12V I can get about 1/2 watt. Total cost of the project? $0.00         Thanks again for the inspiration to heat up the soldering iron once more.     73's     Jim.. WA7HRG

No cost!  That's the HB spirit!  I like the LPF and that pill bottle modular construction is very cool.

This is the perfect time of year for CBLA operation on the QRG.

73 and 3579.......Steve Smith WB6TNL
                   "Snort Rosin"
CBLA # 1

WA7HRG's Mighty Mite

From New Zealand - Roadkill Routers

Hi Andrew,

 

Now that is what I call "cost effective". It works so why not!

 

Good show.

 

73's

Pete

 

Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 7:15 PM

To: Pete Juliano

Subject: Re: Thanks for the heads up on the Si5351

 

Thanks for the heads up regarding the SMA connectors and cables.  I will definitely do that.  Will probably use my first Si5351 as a network connected signal generator and get another Si5351 module to put "on the air".

 

FYI - rather than using Arduino (or some other microcontroller) I have been using recycled ADSL routers for my Si5351 and MEPT beacons.  DLink DSL-502T specifically.  These were the standard broadband router down here in ZL about 5 years ago but are now essentially free on the local auction site because everyone wants WIFI.  They can be flashed with OpenWRT (a Linux derivative).  They have enough GPIO pins that with a bit of configuration can easily control the Si5351 and other I2C devices. 

 

Bill talks about "road kill computers".... these are "road kill routers" but at $1 each you can't really go wrong. 

 

73

Andrew ZL1WJQ