New Analog Frequency Readout for BITX17 VXO

I've been getting tired of being in the dark about the frequency on which my BITX17 was operating.  So I pulled out some graph paper, my frequency counter, and a pencil.  You will see two frequencies at each point -- that's because  I use two crystals, switched by the black knob on the left.  I realize this paper and pencil approach is hopelessly out of date, but I see it as "appropriate technology" for a discrete component all-analog transceiver.  

Pete set me straight on how to come up with the numbers: VXO frequency minus  ACTUAL carrier oscillator/BFO freq.  After doing this I took great delight in going on the air and asking guys with fancy "glowing numerals" rigs to compare their freq readout with my pencil and graph paper readouts: they were painfully close.    

But I am not slipping completely into stubborn Luddite-ism; this weekend I worked on a DDS-based AD9850/Arduino VFO with I-Q output based on Paul M0XPD's Kanga-UK Arduino Shield.   STAY TUNED! 

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Jailed for The Knack: Gerry Wells, Homebrew Hero

Thanks to Thomas of the "SWLing Post" for alerting us to the story of UK radio legend Gerry Wells. As Thomas said in his post, you really need to drop what you are doing and listen to this great BBC program about Gerry: 

http://swling.com/blog/2011/02/radio-documentary-the-wireless-world-of-gerry-wells/

The poor fellow was actually JAILED for his "radio obsession."  Wow.  That was kind of harsh.  But Gerry overcame adversity and had a very happy life in radio.  

Thomas has more on Gerry here: 

http://swling.com/blog/2014/12/jonathans-interviews-with-gerry-wells/

Thanks Thomas!  And thanks to the BBC. 

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VE3MKC's Teensy Si5351 SDR Receiver with a Tiny Color Screen (video)

From: Rich 

To: "soldersmoke@yahoo.com"  
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2015 9:22 AM
Subject: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project

Bill

First, thanks for Soldersmoke and all you do for us QRP hackers around the world. I'm a big fan!

I've detected you are getting sucked into the world of microcontrollers of late. I know you are not really that excited about SDR but this is a radio that combines Arduino, the currently popular SI5351 and a Softrock to make a very functional SDR. I started this project last year which uses the fabulous Teensy 3.1 and companion audio shield. I recently packaged it all up and it looks like a QRP radio now. Still doesn't transmit but as I like to say thats "just a small matter of software".

There are several posts about it on my blog. The most recent:

http://rheslip.blogspot.ca/2015/01/teesy-sdr-project-update.html

There's a link to a video and a link to the code in that post.

Rock on Bill!

73, Rich Heslip

VE3MKC

From: solder smoke

Sent: Friday, January 23, 2015 4:09 AM

To: 

Subject: Re: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project

Wow Rich that is really beautiful.  Amazing!   I am also sending this to Pete Juliano, but I was at first hesitant about this because I feared that your combination of Si5351 and TFT display might be TOO exciting for him. Deep breaths Pete...  

73 and Thanks,  Bill 

From: jessystems@verizon.net
To: soldersmoke@yahoo.com; 
Subject: Re: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 06:03:40 -0800

Hi Rich & Bill,

Wow –really exciting project Rich! Congratulations and Bravo!

This is so exciting, for all hams, as this just shows the power of the available low cost technology that is now on the market. Your project is really tempting as I have a V6.2 15M softrock sitting in a box (somewhere). I was somewhat put off with the Power SDR as the opposite sideband rejection is not too good –it is clear you have cracked that nut.

Thanks for sharing Rich and yes Bill I am taking very deep breaths.

73’s

Pete N6QW

  

• Jan 23 at 9:27 AM

• Pete Juliano
• me

Thanks guys! When I saw the Teensy 3.1 with the companion audio codec board the first thing that came to mind was a portable SDR. Since its Arduino compatible I am able to leverage the SI5351 library, encoder library etc so its mostly just putting software blocks together. The digital filter design is a bit tricky but Loftur VE2LJX did quite a bit of work on that and now it works really well.

I hope to add CW decoding and PSK31 at some point. I've used less than half the flash on the Teensy so lots of room for new features. I'm hoping if the word gets out I won't have to do this all myself!

Pete - too bad you missed the Black Friday sale - Teensy 3.1 and the audio shield for $18. Deep breaths... 

: )

73, Rich

VE3MKC

---

---

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DuWayne's AD9850 Arduino TFT SWR Scanner

This is really nice.   DuWayne KQ4VB, has been talking to Pete about his use of digital chips, Arduinos and TFT displays in homebrew SWR analyzers.   Obviously these techniques could be used to measure the passband of crystal filters.  (Far superior to my pencil and paper procedures.)  Nice work DuWayne!

Pete
Looks good, I did some playing with the TFT board I have.  Did a board for the antenna analyzer using the TFT and a 9850 DDS module insted of the NOKIA and si5351.  Wanted to see if there was much difference between a sine wave out and the square wave from the 5351.  Appears to be very nearly the same from a couple of quick tests I have done.  Want to try some different diodes and change some values for amplifier gain.
Will keep you informed. DuWayne

Earlier... (4 November 2014)

Pete
Really enjoy listening to you on Solder-Smoke.  Saw the link to your
xcvr with the Adafruit si5351 board.  I got a couple of them and have
been playing with code for them.  Have been spending most of my time
working on an antenna analyzer based on the one by K6BEZ. Pleased to see
your article in the latest QQ.  I have used basically the same circuit,
except am using  the little NOKIA LCD display. The resolution is not the
greatest  but works well for this application.  I am using some of the
original code from K6BEZ to talk with his existing PC program.  For
stand alone I have 2 modes, a straight tune mode where I can select the
frequency and read the SWR.  Also implementing a sweep mode that scans
the whole band and after it is finished you can tune across and see the
frequency and SWR.  I am attaching a couple of pictures of what I have
so far. Waiting on the correct op amp to arrive and making some changes
to the amp gain to get better results on the higher band where the
output of the DDS drops off.
Thanks for all the inspiration you give to us home builders and tinkerers
out here.
73 DuWayne   KV4QB

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Interesting Propagation Web Site

CONUS HF BAND CONDX

1/22/15 --- 10:45:00 GMT --- REPORT # 1289

160 80 40 30 20 15 10

I think this is a really interesting and useful way to gather and present information on propagation conditions.   Check it out.   The "instructions" page gives some background info on the technique used. 

http://www.bandconditions.com/ 

The author, Biz, K5BIZ seems like a very FB ham: http://www.qrz.com/db/K5BIZ

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Star City Antique Radio's Beautiful Workshop

Dale Cook of Star City Antique Radios and Test Gear has a really nice site with great pictures of his workbenches and test gear.  Inspirational stuff.  Take a look: 

http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/pages/compact.html

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

All of the Shortwave Spectrum LIVE on Web Waterfall Display

It's been a while since I checked in with this site.  They have made a lot of improvements.  It is very impressive.  I had trouble with it using Internet Explorer, but it worked right away using the Google Chrome browser.   Play with it a bit.  Zoom in on 40 meters.  Listen to the LSB contacts.  Very nice. 

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/


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When Your Local Oscillator Could Sink Your Ship!

Thomas KK6AHT is the intrepid radio amateur from France who moved to California and successfully built a Minima as his first homebrew project.  Yesterday we got additional evidence that Thomas definitely has THE KNACK.  It seems that he has been looking through really old radio magazines (clearly a symptom).  He sent us this add from 1942.  Yikes!  Imagine getting your ship sunk because your Local Oscillator is not quite local enough!  

.....................

Hey!

I thought you would get a kick out of this 1942 ad. Sounds like those guys had a some good reasons to fight QRM ... Who knew the important role played by the FCC during the war?

Now tell me: why were the receivers so noisy at the beginning of the war? What did they change? Happy new year to you both! May the gods of radio (and digital) bring you much fun on the air.

73, Thomas  

..............................

Good to hear from you Thomas.  Long time no hear -- I was beginning to fear that you had grown disillusioned with homebrewing and had switched to stamp collecting or something else less frustrating.

As for the ship radios, two things come to mind.  Some of them may still have been using regens at the start of the war.  If so, that was kind of suicidal -- regens radiate!  The detector moves in and out of oscillation (sometimes staying in oscillation) at the receive freq.  The Germans were quite good at detecting and direction-finding these signals, on land and at sea.   So the regens would have to go.

Superhets are not quite as bad, but they too can radiate.  My Bitx spills out a bit of signal at 23 MHz (VFO) and at 5 MHz (BFO).  Without adequate shielding, these sigs could also be detected and triangulated.   Looks like the radio in the picture had lots of shielding. 

We watched a French movie last night:  The French Minister.  A comedy about life in the French Foreign Ministry.   It was kind of fun.

What are you working on?   I am listening to 17 meters using an OLD superhet in which I have replaced the VFO with an Arduino/DDS generator.   Works great but the display is making lots of noise. 

73  Bill 

..................................

Hi Thomas,

Well Thomas, I will dip my toe into some very deep water and attempt an answer for you which also is an important clue about QRP operations.

1. Today we have many many signals co-existing in the radio spectrum. During the war there was much less radio garbage and the military lit up the ether with transmissions very sparingly. But that is on the transmit side. That said the local oscillators (much like you have with the Si-570 on your Minima) used in receivers also produce RF that unless is minimized in some fashion is passed right through to the antenna and can be detected. Regenerative receivers are especially prone to this. Yes some military equipment used regenerative receivers. In fact the famous Paraset had to be constantly moved so it would not be detected.
2. This receiver generated RF into the antenna was addressed by companies like Scott by shielding everything. That receiver in the photo probably weighed about a 100 pounds or more. Much attention was paid to RF bypassing and grounding. The cheap table top radios were RF generators par excellence.
3. There was another approach developed in WWII to solve that problem and forms the basis of what makes work that little device sitting in your pocket. The odd part it was invented by a famous movie star. Look up Heddy Lamar in wikipedia. She and a co-inventor came up with the concept of frequency hopping and spread spectrum technology. By jumping frequencies it would be hard to pinpoint a transmitting station. That concept forms the backbone of our cellphone system
4. Now the QRP part – if the RF output from a receiver local oscillator (milliwatts) can be detected from afar – then it follows QRP works!

Have fun. 

Pete

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Digitizing the Barebones Superhet

I did this for Pete.  And I did it to start out the new year with something different.  And because I needed the crystal for my beloved BITX and didn't want to buy more crystals. 

After successfully broadening the filter in my Barebones Barbados Superhet (originally built by Dale Parfiit W4OP) I decided to replace the VXO with an outboard Arduino/DDS device. Nothing new in that  (I was playing with this back in October), but in what I think is a symbolically significant twist, I pulled out the tuning cap for the VXO and, in the hole left by the tuning control, replaced the knob with a BNC connector.  That connector now carries DDS signals into the receiver.  The crystal was at around 23.125 MHz -- that's why the LCD display is showing 23 MHz.  

It works great.   I was listening to the DX station in Iran this morning.  

Here is a video of the October 2014 experiments: 


   

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Colin Finishes His BITX

Wow, that is one beautiful BITX.  Nicely done Colin.  But I must say that you are exhibiting an almost inhuman degree of patience!  Who needs a case?  Fire that thing up and make the traditional "still-on-the-workbench" initial contact. 

Hi Guys,

I loved the last SolderSmoke, it was another great episode. It really does amaze me, that a few years ago, hams were saying that it was too difficult to build your own gear that would be anywhere near to the commercial stuff, but here we are with Arduinos etc bringing powerful functionality to the masses. I couldn't have imagined building an SSB rig with a pretty and functional LCD screen when I started in ham radio.

Bill, first regens, now SDRs? Amazing! I exchanged a few words with George Dobbs about your change of heart towards regenerative receivers, he seemed genuinely pleased. :)

Pete, your Si5351 work with the pretty displays is cool, I can see me getting pretty hooked! I have the Si5351 board, Paul M0XPD advised me to buy it. I'd love to build another SSB rig in a smaller box for regular SOTA activating. I must look into the pretty little displays and have a play with the Si5351. I notice that Hans Summers has now put out a cheap Si5351 based kit, handy for us guys in Eu. http://www.hanssummers.com/synth.html

I finished building my BITX board yesterday but wanted to have a sleep before applying power! Today I carefully checked the circuit for errors and found none, phew! I fired the rig up gently, watching the current carefully. I wound up the TX bias to 50mA as stated in the MKARS80 instructions, all went well. I plugged in the mic and spoke - BANG! - Everything went off. Oops - I had used a 500mA fuse for initial safety and forgot to swap it for the bigger one! I fitted a 1.6A fuse and hey presto, all was fine. I was absolutely amazed and to be honest, rather proud of myself. I think the TX is a little bit too hot, my meter is showing about 6W on voice peaks- eek! The rig seems to be perfectly behaved though, no wierd effects seem to be happening. I can just turn the bias down a bit, right?

Anyway, I was happy with my progress so I finished for the day. I still need to investigate and probably tweak the carrier suppression.

I spent a short while talking into a dummy load, using my FT817 to monitor the transmission. My 2yr old son was interested in my voice coming out of the 817'sspeaker!

Thanks for all the guidance and help along the way, I'm elated that I've built a voice rig that works! I've attached a pic of my finished board, I only just squeezed the circuit on, but isn't she pretty? :-)

Can't wait to get the rig built into it's case and score that first QSO.

73, Colin, M1BUU

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Kansas Mighty Mite

Greetings Bill

I have been a bit ill,  but finally found some time to work on my Meara Mighty Mite, which i wish to call it as it was by the grace of Bill Meara that I am able to play a part in the Colorburst Revolution could begin.

I just wanted to share some pictures from the bench of my progress, which is not yet fit for the ether.

I originally wanted to build a really unique design. I have a tendency to complicate things. The more simple it is, the more complicated I tend to make it. After a lot ambitious failed starts, I decided that the best thing to do is to keep it simple. In fact, I would say that I was "over-noodling" this one. So I just started building.

I use copper clad PCB, which I get for very cheap from an ebay seller named abcfab. I use a tool I made to cut islands by hand. Information can be found about this method on my blog.

I am almost embarrassed to share photos of my build, especially after seeing such wonderful designs as you have featured on the webpage. But the excitement is just to great, so here it goes:

I build ugly circuits and I'm proud of it.

I haven't build the LPF yet and wouldn't put it on the air without one. 

Thanks for all the great inspiration and for inspiring a revolution of colorburst liberation!

I want to share something from Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur, W7ZOI & W1FB, page 19

"All of the circuits shown are aimed at reasonable stability, but have relatively low output power. It is possible to bias many of these circuits higher to obtain outputs of up to perhaps 1/4 watt. However, thermal stability is often severely degraded, chirp is introduced if the oscillator is keyed, and the user stands a chance of damaging the crystal from excessive rf current. It is not recommended that a single oscillator stage be used as a simple transmitter. The addition of an amplifier is so straightforward, and the system efficiency is so much better, that the minimal simplicity is not of value."

That may be true, but the Mighty Mite is for learning and getting our feet wet. Still it may be interesting to point the above out or talk about it.

Also, I'm curious to know which schematics everyone is using. The famous Easy QRP transmitter on the QSL page, perhaps DeMaw's from QRP notebook (available on archive.org in pdf form for free).

73, keep your iron hot and stay fluxy,

-KE0BFF, Lawrence KS.

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Pete's Beautiful Tiny Color Display

Oh man, this is the kind of thing that lures me ever deeper into the digital morass.  That would be hard to do with my beloved discrete analog circuits!    Be sure to note the size (it is sitting on the top from a pill bottle -- you can also look at the pen for a size reference). It is 1.25 inches by 1.25 inches.  Pete has it working with the Si5351 software.  As you can see there is still room at the bottom of the display.  Pete notes that an SWR readout is possible.  And Pete got this device for FIVE BUCKS! 

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