Minimalist Mania: AA1TJ-AA1MY QSL, New Yahoo Group

Above is the very classy QSL that Mike, AA1TJ sent to Seab, AA1MY, confirming the first ever tunnel-diode skywave QSO (see below for more details). Go Mikums!

In related news, Jerry, NR5A (who has also been bitten by the minimalist bug) reports the creation of a new Minimalist Radio Yahoo group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Minimalist_QRP_Transceivers/

(Jerry and I have been attempting to translate some technical terms found in British schematics. Even though I lived there for four years, I admit to being stumped by "s.o.t." given with values for capacitors. Could this be "subject of test"? )

"ELECTRONS ON PARADE" A Film from the Radio Corporation of America

Gee-willikers! This RCA movie is the cat's pajamas! Really great stuff. The guy who posted it on YouTube said it had been sitting on his shelf for years, apparently just waiting patiently for the broadband Internet.

I hadn't realized how labor intensive tube production was. Looks like every one of those fire bottles was, to a large extent, put together by hand. The contrast with the way solid state devices are produced is really striking -- the tubes seem like the product of artisans. And they somehow just seem to be more homebrew-friendly than modern solid-state devices.

Don't miss Part 2! Here we see "heroic hams" in action, saving people from serum shortages during floods, etc. Watch the policeman with the Tommy-Gun almost run over the kid on the bicycle. Yikes G-man, that was close!

The date on the film is 1942, and judging by the number of women shown working in the factories it does seem like a wartime film, but I was surprised by how infrequently the tube's role in the war effort was mentioned.

AA1TJ and AA1MY MAKE QRP HISTORY

I was feeling smug about my version of the ET-1/FETer single FET transceiver. I built the transmit portion of the rig this morning, and it fired right up, producing a nice clean CW signal. But then news came in of the historic 100 mile QSO between Michael, AA1TJ, and Seab, AA1MY. Michael was using his new Mikums rig, an 80 meter transceiver built around one tunnel diode. My FET rig seems like a QRO appliance in comparison to the Mikums. Michael's diode rig was putting out 160 micro watts. Yes, 160 uW. Congratulations to Mike and Seab. I'm sure Mike would not mind my sharing his e-mail on this subject (see below). Reading it, you can just feel the excitement that came from this historic contact. I'm sure tunnel diode inventor Leo Esaki (pictured above) would be pleased.
Be sure to check out Michael's description of the rig:
http://mjrainey.googlepages.com/mikums
Also, don't miss the pages on Reginald Fessenden:
http://www.newsm.org/Wireless/Fessenden/Fessenden.html

Friends,
Seab, AA1MY sent me a message just over an hour ago saying that he suddenly began hearing my Mikums transceiver running as a beacon! Seab lives in Bethel, Maine, an air distance of exactly 100miles/160km from my QTH. A few hours earlier I'd measured Mikums' output power at 169uW (yes, microWatts!).
I was at the computer when his message appeared so I quickly called him on the telephone. He said that he'd been monitoring while he was busy with some paperwork. He'd just returned from fetching a load of firewood and all of a sudden there I was! He put the phone near his loudspeaker and I just about fell over! I was weak, but perfectly readable.
Then I practically hung-up on the poor fellow in order to race down to my shack in order to try for a QSO. I heard him clear as a bell at a power of 40w (I reported 459, but I ought to have sent 559). He confirmed my report and then dropped down to 4w. Although weak, I easily copied his 429 report to me. I gave him a 219, which he confirmed.
Oh boy...it's done. We made a skywave QSO using a one-tunnel diode transceiver. I'm practically giddy here :o)
Many thanks to Jim, W1PID, who has patiently listened for several days. In fact, Jim has copied my CQ and callsign several times before my signal evaporated on a breeze of QSB. In return, I copied Jim's Small Wonders Labs DSW at 2w on Mikums with no problem the other day. Again, many thanks, OM. The next time we meet, I'm buying, okay?
Again, way to go Seab; that's one small step for man....naw, more like one more exciting and thoughly useless (ain't it great!) milestone in the history of QRP :o)
73/72's all around,
Mike, AA1TJ

St. Elmo's Fire and Lightning Brushes

I guess I am and AMer at heart. As a kid I used to listen to the AM QSOs on 75 meters in the Northeast. I still occasionally take a look at the AM Window website and follow the chatter from afar. This is another corner of the hobby where guys still melt solder and study schematics.

One of the many interesting things found via the AM Window is an on-line archive of the AM Press/Exchange newsletter. There are some very good articles in there. Issue #114 has a good one by George, W2WLR. It's about lightning and ways to prevent strikes. What I like about the article is the very practical, hands-on approach. George describes how one intrepid enthusiast put an amp meter between a radio tower and ground and watched the currents generated by a nearby storm (don't try this at home!). The article discusses how brushes on the ends of lightning rods help bleed off charge. You can see some charge bleeding off the masts of the ship depicted above.

After reading his article, I went to work. In an idle moment, I looked out the window across Rome's Via Veneto and saw on one of the hotels some lightning rods tipped not quite with brushes, but with multiple spikes. Go St. Elmo!

Humber College Homebrew Space Station Contact? Not really

I wasn't going to mention this, but since we were talking about Grote Reber, I sort of feel obliged to raise this subject. The techno-blogosphere is filled this morning with the story of four Humber College (Toronto) seniors who supposedly contacted the International Space Station with homebrew gear. See: http://www.humber.ca/stories/first_contact.htm Wow, pretty good, eh? Well, not so fast SolderSmoke fans. Turns out you have to read the fine print. They did it with a radio system that they "designed and built themselves." I looked at the slide show and their operating table was covered with expensive commercial gear. Sure enough, when I checked their blog, I found this:

Today, Mr. Rector, Paul, and I went out to Radioworld and purchased a transceiver. After much research, we decided to go with the ICOM Ic-V8000. For the cost, it has exactly what we need. On Friday, we're going to be integrating it into our setup, and doing all the necessary testing.

This contact was no big deal really. When I was talking to Norm Thagard on MIR station back in the 20th century, there was one 13 year-old kid in South Africa who pulled off the same feat.
See: http://www.gadgeteer.us/MIR18.HTM If they had actually built the radios themselves it would have been a bit more noteworthy. Looks like this one had more PR smoke than solder smoke.

RADIO PIONEER: GROTE REBER

Grote Reber has always been a hero of mine. Above you can see the dish that he built in his backyard to conduct radio astronomy in the 1930's.
Read more about OM Grote here: http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_reber.shtml

SolderSmoke NUMBER 100

http://www.soldersmoke.com

SPECIAL CENTENARY EDITION
A look back to the beginning
Rome Travelogue:  Palatine Hill
Fixing my old freq counter: Trials and Tribulations
Empire of the Air:
  More great history, but more tech faux pas
  "The radio art" 
  An historical precedent for our GONG 
  Lake DeForest? 
  A. Frederick Collins
Understanding Beta Independence 
Understanding Feedback and Distortion
SPRAT 137: Minimalist Radio:
  The FETer/ET-1: "Haiku from Solder"
  Regens: Not for the faint of heart
NEW: THE SolderSmoke STORE: T-shirts, Mugs...!
MAILBAG: 
Shawn N3ZHP new to Knack, wants to build ALL his gear
Steve WB6NTL on hippie origins of "Snort Rosin"
Scott AC0GG recommends new mic, equalizer
Jim AL7RV going QRSS mobile. Can we find him? 
George K8VU on kid busted by FCC
Craig KC2LFI helps with SS s sounds 
David KB1BED says SolderSmoke driving up Drake 2-B prices
Steve G0FUW "Ten DSB rigs built in cloud of aromatic 60/40"
Brian NF0G HBing at -20F  Comet Lulin coming
Tony G4LLW Freq standards, IC extraction, Arc transmitters
Kevin AA7YQ listened to SS while on parachute mission 
Graeme ZL2GDN building for DSB and QRSS
Stu N6TTO has new FSK QRSS beacon 10140060 
Mark K6HX (has great "Brainwagon" blog) lost SSDRA
Robin AF1RE Heard BITx20s on the air, now is building
Gerry EI8DRB has his 2B
Ray M0DHP has a strange aromatic solder experience...

My ET-1 / FETer (Transceiver Made with One FET)

Magnificent, don't you think? This is my version of the ET-1 or FETer. It is an HF transceiver using only one active device -- a single MPF-102 Field Effect Transistor. I didn't have a 4 pole Double Throw switch in the junkbox, but I did have a 4PDT relay, so I used the relay. So far I have only built the receiver. It is working nicely. I was listening to German and Polish stations on 80 meter CW this morning.

I had always wanted to build W2UW's ET-1... I've been reading in "Empire of the Air" the inspiring account of Armstrong's invention of the regen receiver... Then, along came SPRAT 137 and G3XBM's FETer. I could no longer resist. Solder was melted.

It is great fun to listen to 80 meters and realize that the only thing between you and the ether is one small FET (you can see mine standing proudly atop the relay!) . Its a lot like using a crystal receiver. That one FET is serving simultaneously as an RF amplifier, mixer and BFO!

On to the transmitter! Thanks to OM Armstrong, to Glen (W2UW), and to Roger (G3XBM).

Minimalist Radio: The ET-1 and the FETer

SPRAT # 137 (Winter 2008-2009) has a number of great articles on minimalist radio -- very simple rigs with low parts counts. Roger G3XBM has a very nice re-make of the ET-1, first introduced by Glen Yingling W2UW in SPRAT 108. I remembered Glen's article -- I always wanted to try it. The ET-1 has just one active device: an MPF-102 FET. And it is a transceiver.
The schematic of the ET-1 appears above. I started building mine yesterday. Got the receiver done and --- WOW! -- heard some 80 meter signals this morning. More to follow...

The SolderSmoke Store: T-shirts, Caps, Mugs, Bumper Stickers, MORE!

http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke

A while back, a SolderSmoke listener suggested that we open up a T-shirt store. That was a good idea. Here it is! The SolderSmoke Store at CafePress. We design the items, CafePress does most of the work, and a portion of the revenue will help keep the podcast and blog going.

Right now we have T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, hats, and some bumper stickers.

We are open to suggestions: If there is something SolderSmoke or homebrew or QRP-related that you would like see on a T-shirt, coffee mug, hat, etc., drop me a line and we will see if we can fit it in with our fine line of Knack-wear!

Here is the link to the store:
http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke

My Frequency Counter. FIXED!

I mentioned my broken frequency counter... Tony Fishpool, G4WIF, of G-QRP sent me a replacement CMOS chip. The counter is now counting beautifully. It was a real chore to get the bad chip off the double-sided board, then I doubled my work by putting Tony's chip in upside down. It doesn't work very well that way. I did another chip extraction. By this time I had all kinds of lifted pads, broken traces, pins on the verge of breaking. I felt sure that all the heating and de-soldering had destroyed the CMOS. But no! It lives!

This was a very satisfying troubleshoot and repair. I feel like Dr. House. The whole thing was made even nicer by the fact that the repair part came from the junkbox of a friend. Thanks Tony!

Looks like the old counter is still well-calibrated. It has my QRSS sig at 10140070. ON5EX's grabber puts me at 10140050. So the counter is 20 Hz high. Not bad for flea market junk.

A. Frederick Collins - Radio Pioneer from my Hometown

I've been reading "Empire of the Air" by Tom Lewis, and I've been struck by how much radio history took place in the Hudson Valley. I have a special interest in this, because I grew up there. As I was reading about Lee de Forest (BOOO! HISS!) I started wondering if the lake near my parents' house was named for him. I grew up near Lake de Forest. Surprisingly, Google and Wiki did not provide the answer (anybody know?), but in the course of my Googling, I discovered something that really surprised me: my little town was the summer home of radio pioneer Archie Frederick Collins (what a great name!). Collins was one of the pioneers of radio telephone, using arc transmitters to send his voice out over the airwaves. Some of the experiments took place right in dear old Congers, N.Y. Collins seems to have been a great guy -- in addition to his pioneering work in radio, he was prolific author, writing for the Knack victims of the day.

Here's a 1908 Scientific American article about his radio work:
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1908col.htm
Here's a good Wiki article on him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Frederick_Collins

One quote from the Wiki: He wrote scientific adventure series novels such as "Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator(1919)" which told of the training and adventures of a 15 year old wireless amateur. Many of his books, such as "The Boy Scientist," (1925) had lots of illustrations and few equations, with an emphasis on "hands-on" experimentation, at a level intended for high school students. After discussing the "Einstein Theory," Collins tells his readers how to build a spectroscope, a radio, and a x-ray machine for home experimentation. Collins encouraged his readers to use their home-built x-ray machine to examine their own bone structure with a fluoroscope.