My recent experience listening to live on-line meteor pings led me to the web site of an organization that I used to belong to: SARA: The Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. Knack to the max in this bunch. These people are going for the REAL DX! Check out their site:
Here's another dose of inspiration from one of our "Homebrew Heroes." Forrest Mims has been one of my heroes for a long time. A colleague yesterday gave me a copy of a recent article in Make about his ozone measuring device (build at home with Radio Shack parts!). With this device he was able to outshine NASA in the data accuracy department. Check out the article:
Knock 25% off your Lulu purchases. Tomorrow only.
The QRSS world was recently mystified by the sudden appearance of this monster on the European grabber screens. People quickly realized that it was a "QR barcode" -- kind of a souped-up version of the standard barcodes, this version holding more information. But what was the message? Scott Harden, AJ4VD, got on the case, and solved the mystery. Read about it here: 
Kitty Hawk N.C., Thanksgiving 2010. Wright Brother's test site. The big rock marks the take-off point. You can see a reproduction of the monorail they used in lieu of landing gear. the white markers behind me show the distances covered on those first four flights. Off in the distance you can see the final, longest flight of that day: 852 feet. 59 seconds aloft.
We spent a very pleasant Thanksgiving day with family out on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, in Kitty Hawk. Of course, we visited the site 0f the Wright Brother's famous first flight. I'll have more about this in the next SolderSmoke podcast. For now, let me share with you this interesting quote about the importance of play and toys (from Wikipedia):
Frosty, K5LBU, sent us this report from Botswana:
We had a blog post about Gianfranco and his amplifiers last year. Check it out here:
"Sky and Telescope" has a nice collection of on-line astronomy utilities. One of my favorites displays the positions of Jupiter's Galilean moons. It also gives you some nice heads up on the transit and eclipses of the moons. Its fun to play with the "+10 minute" button and see how they move around. The view you see above is fairly close to what I see through my telescope (but Jupiter's stripes are not quite so pronounced). You can get the utility for free -- you just have to fill out a registration form.
A while back we had post about amateur RADAR. The wizard behind that project was Greg, N8ZRY. (I liked his quote: "Old radars do not die... they simply phase array.") Greg's latest project is the 20 meter SSB rig pictured above. It was recently featured on the Make blog.
Bill, W4HBK, sent a nice note in response to my blog post describing his MEPT QRSS grabber receive station. You can see the peninsula he describes above. 
When you go to Lulu, don't just buy "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" but check out these other fine Knack-related publications:
The folks at spaceweather.com have come up with something really cool. We are now in the final phases of the annual Leonids meteor shower. I can't see many meteors through my light-polluted skies (plus its COLD out there), but Spaceweather Radio has come to the rescue. They currently have on-line the audio feed from a receive station tuned to the freq of the The Air Force Space Surveillance Radar. It transmits 24/7 on 216.98 MHz. It is reported to be on of the most powerful transmitters in the world. You can hear the "pings" caused by the reflections of meteors. I've heard several as I typed this post! Be sure to visit the "how we do this page." I appears that there is ham running the receive station.
My in-box seemed to have an outer space theme today. First, from Guanajuato, Mexico comes word that the radio club there is planning a second edge-of-space balloon launch. SARSEM ICARUS II is scheduled to go up on 20 November carrying a VHF/UHF repeater. SARSEM ICARUS I was obviously a big success. Check out the picture it took from 29000 meters up (above). Thanks Roberto! 
A couple days ago we noted that the International Space Station would be visible over N. America this week. So far we have only one report of a sighting: Jim, AL7RV saw it from Mississippi. This morning Yahoo carried some pictures taken from the crew's cupola. This one shows some territory dear to our hearts! 
Finally, spaceweather.com carried this beautiful aurora shot from Tromso, Norway. It was taken by Ole Christian Salomonsen on November 14. Spaceweather notes that "a solar wind stream has been buffeting the earth's magnetic field." This probably explains why Maria and I could hear very few stations on 75 meters last evening. And 75 seemed totally dead yesterday morning.
This from the MAKE blog this morning:
Spaceweather.com showed this beautiful picture of an International Space Station fly-over. It was taken by David Blanchard near Flagstaff, Arizona on Saturday. 
When we were in Italy, ON5EX provided my "go to" grabber. Because we were just one ionospheric hop away, and because Johan had a really excellent receive system, it seemed like my little signals were visible on his screen from dawn to dusk every day.
Born: 1939, Pensacola, Florida I was first licensed in 1954 as WN4HBK and upgraded to General in 1955 acquiring the call sign I've used to this day. My dad is responsible for my favorite suffix moniker. the Hot Biscuit Kid. I could really put away my mom's scratch biscuits!
My first station I built myself and consisted of super regenerative RX and a 6L6 TX.from designs in the ARRL Handbook. My dad was a radio mechanic for the Navy and taught me how to read schematics and solder. Later stations consisted of Hallicrafters S-38C, National NC-98, HRO-5 recievers and several Heathkit and Globe Scout transmitters. Boy, those were the days!!
After high school I entered college intending to become an antenna engineer but eventually gravitated towards a degree in Physics. This was pretty cool because it led to a career with NASA where I worked on the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle projectsall thanks to my early interest in radio.
Today I'm fully retired and living in Gulf Breeze, FL. just across Pensacola Bay from my hometown. My XYL (Anna) and I enjoy the local beaches in a variety of wayssurf fishing, beachcombing, hiking, painting (her) and photography (me). We are also enjoy gardening and winemaking.
My Amateur Radio interests are CW, DX, contests, antennas and digital modes.
Presently I am experimenting with QRSS and have a 250 milliwatt MEPT station on 10.140 MHzsend me an email if you copy my signal. I now have a grabber to present a spectral display of QRSS activity for other Hams worldwide to watch for their signals http://www.qsl.net/w4hbk/w4hbkgrabber.html
I got a bit of mail from Great Britain about the use of the word "knackers" in yesterday's post. I vaguely remembered that this word has anatomical connotations in the UK. But it just worked so well. I needed something that would rhyme with Marx's "Workers." And "Knackers" is kind of close to "Hackers." And we all have "The Knack." So, I made use of some artistic license. Apologies to our British cousins. I'm already on linguistic thin ice with them because of my use of the American pronunciation of solder. (The Brits pronounce the L -- to their ears, the American pronunciation conjures up an activity far removed from soldering.) 
The folks over at ifixit.com have come up with a Self-Repair Manifesto that readers of this blog will find inspirational. I like the line about "Repair injects soul and makes things unique!" Indeed. As of yesterday they were giving away free posters (real posters, not e-posters) in exchange for a Tweet (I got mine, and intend to put it up here in the SolderSmoke Shack.)
Here is the site for the Howard Armstrong 75th Anniversary of FM Transmissions:
Lulu is at it again. Just use the coupon code VETSDAY and get 20.10% off on your purchase of
AJ8T sent me the link to the web site of this, our latest Homebrew Hero. I don't think she is a ham, but Tatjana definitely has The Knack. Check out that workmanship. The range of the projects is also quite astounding. It is so impressive that I really found myself questioning whether this could be for real. But it is. 
SolderSmoke #127 has been released! Get it here:
I dusted off the old G0UPL QRSS QRPP FSK 30 meter transmitter (built and last used in Italy) and hooked it up to about 50 feet of AC line cord stretched low across the new Northern Virginia backyard. I hooked it up to my Kempton Park power supply (thanks for the chip Tony!) and fired up my freq counter (also from Kempton Park -- remember the chip I soldered in backwards?) I put a field strength meter next to the wire and tuned my L network for max smoke. Hey, and it worked! My signal is the wavy shark fin-looking thing. I think the wave results from a temp drop in the shack that happened when I opened the door. Just to confirm it was me, I turned the transmitter off for a few minutes. You can see me disappear from W1BW's screen.
I hope to have a new podcast out soon, perhaps a Halloween edition. Lulu is offering 20% off on SolderSmoke -- The Book. Just use the coupon code: TRICK305
October 11, 2010
SolderSmoke returns!
Shack #7: The New Shack
Drake 2-B inhaling RF
Listening to 75 AM and SSB: WA1HLR, KM1A
Time signal on 3820 +/-?
Repairing DaVinci Code QRSS rig
UK test gear works fine on this side of pond!
Computer woes: First Linux SolderSmoke
Astronomy from inside the Beltway
Winter SPRAT: Great info, philosophy, inspiration
Charging up solar cells
Inbound Boatanchors: DX-40, DX-60, HQ-100, HA-600(A), HT-37
MAILBAG
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We're still in a temporary apartment, waiting to move into our new place. The new QTH has some good tall trees suitable for wire antenna support. I have my eye on a room for the shack. 
The family and I are now in Miami. We departed Rome on Thursday, made a quick visit to San Diego (to see my brother and his family) and are now in beautiful Miami, right on Biscayne Bay. We'll be here for a few days. No radio activity to speak of -- the move kept me quite busy. But I picked up a good book at the airport -- "Is God A Mathematician?" by Mario Livio. It provides a lot of useful info on some of the math-in-electronics issues that we talk about on the podcast and in SolderSmoke -- The Book.
Not really a QRP project (the goal of course is definitely QRO) but Knack victims will find this article and the associated video interesting. We've covered homebrew fusion before. This fellow is the 38th successful "amateur fusor" in the world. Go Brooklyn!Hi Bill,
I was at the East Suffolk Wireless Revival yesterday (Sunday) morning – hardly FDIM, but still a nice little flea market / boot sale, maybe 20 / 25 people selling odds and ends from SMD components to rigs and other bits of kit. Finished up in a bit of a good natured scrum fighting over variable capacitors made all the more desirable for having proper shafts and being made of something other than plastic.Your name came up as being the inspiration for a resurgence in home building and the subsequent rise in prices of desirable bits as they became scarce as more people wised up to the fun of building and the ease of just melting solder straight on to the PCB rather than trying to etch something. Rather suspect that your podcasts and that book are actually being more influential than you realise. Read my copy lying on the beach in Antigua, but still keep going back to it, and as you have said in the past, the rest of the library – it’s making a very pleasant change from the Masters that I’m buried in at the moment.
Bought the UK equivalent of a Harbor Freight punch over a few days back, so can now make my own little round pads out of old PCB – magical !!
Good luck with the move – I was brought up on a prison farm in Tanzania amongst other places, so recall all too well that strange sense of loss when you leave a country for pastures anew. Lovely to hear Maria sounding so Italian – picking up another language at that age is a wonderful thing to have done and will no doubt stand both her and Billy in good stead over the years. I still manage a little Swahili after 50 years, including teaching my last 2 dogs a few commands which is always funny.
Looking forward to the next podcast – they have become an important little interlude in my life and keep my interest in amateur radio invigorated
All the best
Nick
Radio Guys at University of Virginia, 1966
They are coming to pack up my soldering iron next week, so I'm afraid this will be my last Roman creation. You can see the W3PM Colpitts oscillator in the center. The KA7EXM AF amp is in the lower left. The Softrock-based Manhattanized PA is in the upper right. To the right of the oscillator is a classic W1FB two diode balanced modulator. You see three big green relays. The top one switches the antenna and 12 volts during T/R switching. The middle one switches the audio amp input, the bottom one switches the audio amp output. (I use the same AF amp for receive and transmit, just switching around the input and output.)
A while back, Tony Parks very kindly sent me one of his wonderful Softrock RXTX V6.3 Software Defined Radio kits. I took a shot at it, but it turns out that I'm not very good with surface mount construction using small parts. I've gotten very used to the Manhattan style. Still, I did manage to build one of the Power Amplifier modules, and I put it to good use in a DSB WSPR transceiver I've been building (see above) . It worked great. For a while... Then it released some smoke.
Anyway, after a trying to fix this thing, I finally gave up and decided to use the circuit, but in Manhattan form. Everything up top. No SMT. Bigger coil cores. The temperature sensing circuitry went off to the right. The output transformer went off to the left, and the driver stage went down below the kit's board. Here is what it looks like now. Again, it works great.
I want to thank Tony and the Softrock guys for giving me this experience. Their kits are wonderful and are really making a tremendous contribution to the hobby. I strongly recommend them. The instructions are great, much like those of the old Heathkits. But for me, I'll take Manhattan.
http://soldersmoke.com
Special Four Days In May Edition!
Opening music: FDIM Bluegrass
Our last (sniff) Italy Travel Report
Snakes and Fireflies in Lazio
G3ROO's Antenna Book
Davinci beacon crosses the pond
WSPR rig repaired
New transceiver built for 30 meter digi
Manhattan-izing an SMT board
Paul Harden's wonderful book
BOB CRANE'S FDIM INTERVIEWS!
"Muntzing" with Michael, G3RJV's "Socketry"
Meeting Andrea IW0HK in Piazza San Cosimato!
MAILBAG: Including mail from Farhan, Roger Hayward and Ade Weiss
