A homebrew 15-10 SSB Rig for the Dominican Republic:
This is my second build of this rig.
I am using a 10 pole crystal filter that I built for the first build, but did not use. I am also using the tuning capacitor from a Galaxy V's oscillator -- I like the anti-backlash gears and the reduction drive. This rig is built on a pine board covered with adhesive copper tape. It has been built stage-by-stage on copper-clad boards using the Manhattan construction style.
The structure of the rig is basically that of a BITX rig -- the RF and IF amplifiers are Termination Insensitive Amplifiers.
Soon the receiver will be completed. I will then build the stages needed for the transmitter portion of the transceiver.
I will take this rig with me to the Dominican Republic.
(Just north of Timonium, colocated with the future home of the National Electronics Museum)
System Source has a computer museum displaying technology from the inception of computing. Founders Bob Roswell and Maury Weinstein opened ComputerLand, a predecessor to System Source, in 1981. Rapid advances in technology in the early 1980’s made some ComputerLand inventory obsolete before it could be sold. Bob and Maury’s old ComputerLand store on Redwood Street had a bank vault in the basement, so they filled it with vintage tech.
Wow, that bank vault in the basement is really intriguing. We need to find more of those.
The Usagi guy's 6AU6A T-shirt is pretty cool. I also liked his reference to Tracy Kidder's book "The Soul of A New Machine." I happen to be re-reading that book now. I'm struck by the complexity of even the computers of the late 1970s. At one point Kidder notes that there is only one guy on the hardware team who has a complete grasp of how the hardware in the new machine actually works. The software was probably even more inscrutable. And of course, things have gotten a LOT more complex. This is the big reason that I have decided to stick with simple, analog, discrete component, HDR rigs that I can understand. To each his own. One look at the wiring on some of those old computers tells me that this is not for me.
I think this is one of the best troubleshooting events in radio history: they thought at one point that what they were hearing was the result of pigeon poop in the antenna. Turns out they were hearing radiation from the birth of the universe.
And here is a wonderful 2014 6 minute podcast with Penzias and his co-discoverer Robert Wilson:
Like some of the commenters, I had been scratching my head wondering why someone would go to all the trouble of counterfeiting electronic parts. It just didn't seem to make economic sense. Perhaps they were just marketing factory rejects? But no, IMSAI Guy shows in the video above that it is a lot more insidious. It turns out that this kind of crime DOES make economic sense (see comments). So be careful out there.
Here is another one IMSAI Guy did yesterday, looking at other faked chips:
I like Frank Harris K0IYE's book so much that I don't mind posting about it frequently. "From Crystal Sets to Sideband" is must-read material for all homebrewers.
The picture above is especially significant. I first came across it in the old pulp-style magazine called World Radio. The picture, like Frank's book, is truly inspiring.
This week I stumbled across a relatively new chapter in Frank's book. Chapter 3A deals with his approach to homebrewing (Luddite, analog, HDR) and his advice on how to set up a home ham-radio workshop. There is a lot of wisdom in this chapter.
The opening paragraph of Chapter 3A really grabbed me. Check it out here. Click on the text below for a better view:
Click on the image above for an easier read
Frank's advice on what to do when you get stuck on a problem is right on the mark, and a bit counterintuitive, but very true: Do something else for a while.
My fellow Hambassador Dave WA1LBP sent this to me today (from Taiwan, I think). Lots of great ham radio and SWL info in these many publications. The one that caught my eye was "The Modulator," an ARRL publication done by the 2nd District in the 1920s. Really interesting. I will sent this to Lyle, W7QCU who has an interest in radio from this era.
Joe KA1BWO is a well-known AM operator who moved West to Idaho several years ago. We had a very nice contact on 10 meter AM on January 14, 2024. See the video above.
I was using an old CB rig that I had converted to legitimacy on 10 meters using the mod developed by Jerry K5JC:
Lots of great ideas on workshop or lab design from Andreas, the guy with the Swiss accent. Andreas is HB9BLA. I liked all of this, especially his idea on books.
This contact with Masa was a lot of fun. 2300Z January 14, 2024. 15 meters was obviously in great shape. Suddenly I started hearing clock chimes. The sound seemed to be coming from my rig. Then I looked at my watch and realized we were at the top of the hour. Masa-san's clock chimes were being picked up by his microphone. The microphone was in his I-pad, which he was using to connect to his ham radio station. Very cool.
This email came in from Masa:
兼子政彦<>
Sun, Jan 14, 7:54 AM (20 hours ago)
to me
Hello Bill
Thank you very very much for your Email attached the video of our QSO.
Your homemade transceiver is working excellent! I was very surprised to watch the video. I checked transmitting of your equipment is very good this morning. And this evening I understood receiving was also very very good. Congratulations on your homemade equipment.
I have tried remote operation for several months. But I’m afraid my transmitting is not good.
Thanks for your video, I could tell following things. Thank you so much l appreciate it.
My remote signal has almost no blinking up,I felt.
There are about 2 seconds latency on my transmitting.
Most important thing I realize is English conversation over the phone is very difficult for me. I need to learn intonation and pronunciation of English much more.
Again thank you very much for your Email,I appreciate it.
For years I have been heartlessly slaughtering innocent Heathkit Q multipliers, just to get these variable capacitors. Dean KK4DAS has joined me in this mayhem. And recently Wes W4JYK has also started hunting down QF-1s.
I am sorry to report that my love for this variable capacitor has taken a hit. The capacitance is perfect. And it has a reduction drive built into the shaft. But I have found that that reduction Drive has a form of backlash. It is really just a dead spot that you find when tuning in a signal. Turning in one direction, all is good. But when you then try to turn in the other direction, you have to turn the shaft a bit before the cap blades begins to move (see video above). This makes tuning SSB signals a bit difficult.
What should I do? Should I pull out a Dremel and cut off the reduction drive, then use a better (external) reduction drive to move the vanes? Any other ideas?
These are the kinds of problems that homebrewers face...
Wow, this is something that I've wanted to fix for a long time. I wanted to make it possible to display subtitles in many languages on my YouTube videos. Andreas Spiess (the guy with the Swiss accent) just showed me how to do it. YouTube never really explained this very well. But Andreas did. This is how it works:
I just tell YouTube to display English language subtitles. People can watch these English subtitles, or turn them off. But here is the cool part: People who want to see the subtitles in a language other than English, just go to AutoGenerate Subtitles, and select the language they want. Apparently YouTube just has an AI translate to the target language from the original English transcript. BOOM! Roberto es tu tio!
Here is what you have to do:
1) After you turn on the video, go to Subtitles/CC and turn it on.
2) Click on English (auto translate)
3) Then click on the arrow and select the language you want to see the subtitles in.
Once you do this and select your language, all you will have to do in future viewing sessions is to hit the CC button on the YouTube video toolbar. Subtitles in your language should then appear.
You may have to play with this a bit, but it works, and this should make a big difference for many viewers. If you run into trouble, watch Andreas's video (above) or send me an e-mail.
I need to go through all of my videos and set the original language to English. For some reason YouTube had it set to Azerbaijani. I don't know why, but I will --starting from the most recent -- go back and change the original language of the videos to English. I have changed the settings so that all future videos should generate the English subtitles automatically.
I tested the mechanism in Spanish and in Urdu. It works. Below you can see the Urdu subtitles on a recent video:
Hi Bill, Given that the audience of SolderSmoke is more angled towards home brew and self construction, I wonder if you would mind informing your listeners of a very valuable antenna design website that despite the high level of quality work put in, is not getting very many visitors and may therefore be taken down.
Access to the site is free and the URL is sota-antennas.com.
Despite SOTA being part of the name this is of use for all portable operators and indeed home stations as well. It is a series of online tools that not only defines wire lengths for building but also gives EZ-NEC like diagrams of the expected radiation patterns. My favourite little jewel is in the off-centre-fed dipole section where the positioning of the feed-point is varied automatically to show you the bands the antenna will resonate on. So as an Example a 40m OCFD with a feed-point at 33/66% will not resonate on 15m however one with the feed-point located somewhere near 18/82% will.
The website currently supports Linked-Dipoles, Off Centre Fed Dipoles, End Fed Half Waves, Delta Loops, Half Squares and Moxon antennas. It could be extended to support others but that is unlikely if the current site is not used more.
I think we got our first e-mail from Ramakrishnan way back in 2006. At the time he was VU3RDD. On June 22, 2008 in SolderSmoke #86 we reported on the birth of Ramakrishnan's new harmonic. In this interview with Eric 4Z1UG we hear of Ramakrishnan's daughter (the same harmonic) getting her ham license and working with her dad on electronic projects. Ramakrishnan has been with us for a long time!
It was very cool to hear Ramakrishnan talk about the Lamakaan convention, the BITX 40, and the book The Electronics of Radio. There was a nice mention of SolderSmoke and Pete.
As you know, here at SolderSmoke East HQ we are all about TRADITION. So last night (New Year's eve) I fired up my venerable HT-37 / Drake 2-B combo and made a few Straight Key Night (SKN) contacts on 40 meter CW. I was indeed using my straight key. Video above.
That's William, now ZL4L, and his homebrew 40 meter SSB transceiver. He has given the rig a wonderful name from Greek mythology: The Griffin (see below). I talked to William this morning on 10 meter SSB. I mentioned my homebrew rig and to my surprise (this doesn't happen much) he asked for more info. Then he told me about his own homebrew creation, The Griffin. FB William!
I have always wanted to build a homebrew transceiver-and recently I completed my pride and joy-a 40m SSB/MCW transceiver-I call it the ZS5WC "Griffin"..
"Griffin"..-well --if you know greek mythology you will find that it defeated much greater adversaries in battle.(to cut a long story short..) The parallel I am getting at is..Big commercial rigs can be taken on by a rig constructed at home-and with great success!. Sure, it does not have the bells and whistles of a 1000mp-but the TX audio is good, the RX is great , and the SMILE factor-even with all the little quirks is off the scale!.. Basically it is a single conversion superhet-4 tuned BPF stages,ATT, Gain control stage ahead of 1st Rec. Mixer/Bal. mod (NE612) , Xtal 10mhz homebrew filter,2 transistor feedback amp, second gain control stage,2nd mixer/BFO (NE612)-On TX to PA board-4 transistor pre-amp, IRF510 mosfet PA, LPF and RX /TX relay. ON RX to TL072 audio pre-amp, Spits to AGC/S-meter amp-(741 and BC107's) and audio amp TBA820m. ALC is done on AGC board as well with BC107 back to back to AGC bc107. The S-meter drive is developed in the emitter leg of the AGC BC107-simple series pot to calibrate-no zero pot is required..(Works great!) There is a volt control PCB too, with RX/TX switching. On the main PCB there is a phase shift osc. for MCW and sidetone. Alc is adjustable from front panel from 1/2 watt to 5 watt.Rit is included in the Hartley osc. circuit and readout is done with a pic and two line LCD disp.(from AADE.com..) Freq. drift from warm is 200Hz down in frequency then swings round and stabilises close to start freq. Rit is good for around 5Khz swing. Amp keying is available on the back panel, as well as an aux. 12 supply-(To run a homebrew noise squasher and amp..)
The article about Sergeant Malik Pugh USMC on Okinawa brought back memories from the 1990s. David Cowhig was 73 Magazine's Hambassador on Okinawa -- I had the same "position" in the Dominican Republic. David and I were both in the Foreign Service; we joked that 73 had afforded us our only chances to be ambassadors of any kind. David's Okinawa QSL and the opening from his initial report to 73 magazine appear above. You can see more here:
Finally (and this is really cool): David Cowhig has been putting his language skills to good use, translating Chinese written material. He sent me his translation of the opening chapters of a Chinese science fiction novel about ham radio. Readers of the SolderSmoke Daily News will like this:
John EI7GL has a great blog post about some experiments recently done by Salvador EA5Y. Salvador was aiming his 4 element yagi in one direction, sending dits, and watching for the signal to come around the other side. You can see the results in the display above. I commented that this might be the time for one of those antennas with which you can instantly reverse the pattern. Or, probably better, have some other hams aim their antennas in the opposite direction so that they can catch the circumnavigating signals.
Sergeant Malik Pugh recently won the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal for stepping forward and 3D printing a part that was needed to put a satellite terminal back in operation. That's was great, but even more interesting for us is the fact that Sergeant Pugh has a home electronics workshop in his place on family quarters on Okinawa. See picture above.
The workshop seems to be focused on RC cars, robots and drones, but there is clearly ham radio potential there. This may be the first time since David Cowhig WA1LBP's tour on the island in the early 1990s that we see a workshop like this one. David was 7J6CBQ and, in addition to his duties at the American Consulate at Naha, Okinawa, served as 73 Magazine's "Hambassdor" (I was the Hambassador to the Dominican Republic at the same time).
