This is simply awesome. At almost every minute of this video, I found myself thinking, "Yea, I'd screw that up." Even the simple stuff, like cutting out the cockpit windows: "Yea, I'd screw that up too."
More info on the builder:
Posts
2 hours ago
Monday, January 9, 2023
Arnie Coro CO2KK -- Homebrew Hero -- Silent Key
I was sorry to read this morning of the passing of Homebrew Hero Arnie Coro CO2KK. As we see in one of the obits, Arnie got his start in radio at age 12, with the gift from his father of a chunk of galena, a coil, and some headphones.
Here are some of the SolderSmoke posts about Arnie:
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/search?q=CO2KK
He will be missed.
Sunday, January 8, 2023
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Dilbert Knack Video: Who was the "Doctor"?
I was looking at this again and I realized that there was more to it than I thought. Who was the "doctor" who was filling in for their regular doctor?
Sunday, January 1, 2023
Happy New Year and Straight Key Night from HI7/N2CQR
HNY from HI7! In keeping with SolderSmoke tradition, I recorded the above greeting. If you look over my right shoulder, or in the picture below, you can see the apartment building we will be moving into (at least for the winter months) later this year. There will be a small shack on the top level. And yes, a telescope.
This morning I fired up the uBITX on 20 CW and made two Straight Key Night contacts. My key is the straightest of the straight -- a homewbrew thing made from an old hack-saw blade, copper tape, brass screws, scrap wood, and duct tape. Picture below.
73 to all! HNY and good luck in 2023!
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Monday, December 26, 2022
A Blast from the Past: TR on Homebrewing (sort of)
"It is not the critic who counts; not the ham who points out how the homebrewer stumbles, or where the builder of rigs could have built them better. The credit belongs to the ham who is actually at the workbench, whose hands are scarred by solder and metal and glue; who strives valiantly; who errs, whose amp oscillates again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to build his rigs; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of homebrew achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid operators who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Sunday, December 25, 2022
Some Direct Conversion Receiver History
Here is the article by Wes Hayward and Dick Bingham that started it all:
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/60s/QST-1968-11.pdf
page 15
Here's a discussion by Wes of the original project:
https://www.n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/Direct%20Conversion%20Receivers%20History%20-%20W7ZOI.pdf
Here is an article about DC receiver in phasing rigs by Gary Breed K9AY:
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/80s/QST-1988-01.pdf
page 16
Roy Lewallen W7EL's Optimized transceiver (with a direct conversion receiver):
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/80s/QST-1980-08.pdf
page 14
Jerry KI4IO on Building a DC Receiver
https://groups.io/g/qrptech/message/17
Michael Black wrote on March 5, 2014 at 3:54 PM
Isn't it a bit dated?
When "direct conversion" receivers came along in 1968 (the concept existed before, just not the name), it was to build simple receivers. They took over from regens (which of course for the purpose of CW and SSB, were "direct conversion"), and kind of bumped simple superheterodyne receivers out of the magazines.
And they were easy to build, so long as the meaning of the dots were standard, but good performance was elusive. Endless articles about better mixers or more front end selectivity, and still the same basic results The Heathkit HW-7 comes along, and endless mods to that, but still no perfection.
Slowly the move was back to simple superhets, especially with some of the early seventies ICs intended for radio, and then ladder filters came along (actually they came early at least by 1974 from the UK and/or France, but while they got mention in North America early-ish, it took some years before the KVG filters were pushed aside and ladder filters got the spotlight).
And then wham, in the mid-eighties someone caught on. The problem with direct conversion receivers wasn't the mixer (well not once it was a balanced mixer) or lack of front-end selectivity, it was the matter of properly terminating the mixer. The problems that had been there all along were gone. And direct conversion receivers started their climb to being complicated receivers.
I guess it was that receiver by Gary Breed in QST circa 1986 with diode balanced mixers and termination that changed things. A new concept, but not really, I remember an article in QST in 1974 where a DBM diode mixer for VHF was properly terminated, and yet the concept went no further until a decade later.
Actually, I think there is a tiny bit about mixer termination in "Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur" but it never went so far as to say "this is what we need".
Or perhaps that tiny transceiver by Roy Llewellyn in QST was the first, I cant' remember. It certainly used a diode mixer with termination for the receiver.
And that set the stage for Rick Campbell's various receivers, all counting on termination of the mixer.
The ideas can often be there, but not applied because technology doesn't allow it yet, or just not looking that far beyond this month's construction article.
Michael
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Kludge. Rhymes with Fudge. On PBS!
At about 12:26 in this video, David Brooks uses the word "kludge" on the Public Broadcasting System. He pronounces it CORRECTLY! (But then he and the host question whether it is a real word.)
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