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Sunday, April 26, 2009
SolderSmoke 106 Podcast
In SolderSmoke 106:
Sicily, Mt. Etna, The Godfather
DSB success on WSPR
Am I the lowest power WSPR station in the world?
Diode Ring Mixers
SolderSmoke: The Book
SolderSmoke: The Cologne?
And now, a word from our sponsor: Genesis Radio
MAILBAG
Our first sponsor: GenesisRadio
My very ugly DSB QRPP WSPR Rig
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Eldon's awesome 9V QRSS rig
For now, even thou it worked, I have abandoned the Water Tank QRSS Encoder, for a more traditional ID Keyer (K-ID2), and I have been busy rebuilding my 9 Volt Battery QRSS transmitter.
For my first approach, I wanted to use the Manhattan style of construction using mostly SMDs. The Oscillator was very successful even thou there were NO actual Manhattan Islands use, the components are just tacked-soldered together - I guess it would have to be called the "Ugly SMD Style".
Photos of Rev-0 are available on my web site;
http://qrss.ebcon.com/WA0UtWH/Gallery/Qx/
Setting the frequency was tough, as the some initial installed component's had to be replaced to get it to oscillate and adjustable within the 100Hz QRSS band. The "Ugly SMD Style" of construction is possible, but circuit changes are difficult. I decided to etch a HB circuit board to provide for a more physically stable "component selection breadboard", where SMDs part values could be easily tried, by just pressing them down in place (which BTW works very well). I then decided to expand the etched board to include space for the K-ID2 Keyer - with the goal of direct QRSS modulation with very few additional components.
This all worked so well, that I constructed another for a final form. Note: the second transistor in the photos is a 78L05 voltage regulator, which is used to help with long term oscillator stabilization, and used to reduce the power requirement and provide battery longevity.
The final QRSS Beacon uses a SMD 2N3904 for the oscillator and is now transmitting 1.5mW into a 18 inch loop antenna, currently only my grabber shows the results. But - My plan is to build this Beacon into the center insulator of a 30m Dipole and then start looking for QRSS Grabber DX. The battery should last several days at this very low power.
My goal is: to achieve long distance, with a very physically-small transmitter, small part count, and with extremely low power.
It will take me several days to construct and install the dipole antenna, until then you can see this Beacon sending "WA0UWH" on the Seattle Grabber:
http://qrss.ebcon.com/WA0UtWH/grabber/
73's - Eldon - WA0UWH
On to the Canary Islands
As I've been doing, I decided to see who was at the other end of that line. It was Luis, EA8AY (pictured above). Luis's station picked up my 18 milliwatt signal at 2106 UTC on April 24. The distance was 1871 miles (3011 kilometers). I was 23 db below the noise.
Luis has a very nice web page: http://www.ea8ay.com/index.html (Warning: This site will likely cause feelings of extreme jealousy: Luis is living in a fantastic location, with a beautiful family AND he is the owner of an Argonaut 509!)
On his site, Luis has a nice video that will give you a sense of what WSPR is like:
wspr with 100 mw from luis on Vimeo.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Crossing a small bit of the pond...
(The images above and below are of Jan's locations in the Faroe islands (from his site).
Thursday, April 23, 2009
WSPRing along at 27 db below the noise....
http://wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/spots
Be sure to click on the map display also.
I was intrigued by the Signal to Noise ratio column, and wondered what the reference bandwidth for the noise was. K1JT's pages show the reference bandwidth is 2500 Hz, and that WSPR can decode signals that are as much as 27 db below that noise.
That's great. I guess I don't have to worry about the lower sideband of my 30 mw signal causing anyone any trouble. It will be very far down in the noise.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Are Diode Ring Mixers Fundamentally Different?
Here is my latest e-mail to Joop. The RSGB diagram for the ring diode mixer appears above.
Joop: I think the way the diode ring mixer works is very different from the way a two diode singly balanced mixer functions. The effect, of course, is the same. But the polarity reversing element introduced by the ring configuration -- it seems to me -- makes this a very different circuit.
Attached is the RSGB Handbook diagram I mentioned. I like it, because you can really SEE how the actions of the diode ring produce the sum and difference freqs (you have to keep Fourier in mind, and imagine the results of filtering).
The two diode circuit simply "chops" the input signal at the rate of the LO. And it would even work in a non-switching mode -- you could, for example, use FETs instead of the diodes and bias them to operate in the non-linear portion of their curves, right? This makes me think that the diode ring mixer circuits (aka "polarity switching mixers" or "commutating mixers") are very different.
73 Bill
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Balloon! Project Blue Horizon Reaches Mid-Atlantic
Balloon Launch - Assist in Tracking
The NS3 group of Cornell University engineering graduate students will launch PBH-9 (Project Blue Horizon) from Lockheed Martin in Owego NY on Sunday evening, 19 Apr 09, at approximately 21:00 EDT (Monday, 20 Apr 09, 01:00UT)
This ARHAB flight (Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning) will ascend and then float for up to 50-hours while drifting to the east.
The payload will include a KC2TUA-8 144.390 APRS beacon
(track via (http://findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=KC2TUA-8)
and HF CW position report and telemetry downlinks on 7.104MHz and 10.148MHz.
The NS3 PBH-9 team requests distant ground stations receive and report HF telemetry via N2XE@arrl.net including reception UT date and time.
Distant receiving stations are welcome to also submit HF
reception reports to W0RPK@amsat.org for the ARHAB <50mhz href="http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/ARHABrecords.htm" target="_blank">http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/ARHABrecords.htm.
Additional PBH-9 information including HF telemetry transmit schedule and format is available via
http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/ARHABlaunchannouncements.htm.
Flight updates are available from the NS3 PBH-9 team
via http://twitter.com/pbh3.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
WSPR Double Sideband Success!
Following guidance from Gene, W3PM (whose FB SSB rig inspired this effort), I set my oscillator at 10138700. That puts the upper sideband in the middle of the WSPR band.
Here's my first set of reports:
Reported | Distance | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | Call | SNR | by | km | mi | ||||||
2009-04-19 18:32 | N2CQR | -18 | DL0TUH | 1353 | 841 | ||||||
2009-04-19 18:32 | N2CQR | -24 | PA1GSJ | 1343 | 835 | ||||||
2009-04-19 18:30 | N2CQR | -19 | DL0TUH | 1353 | 841 | ||||||
2009-04-19 18:26 | N2CQR | -22 | DL0ODX | 977 | 607 | ||||||
2009-04-19 18:26 | N2CQR | -30 | G8BKE | 1519 | 944 | ||||||
2009-04-19 18:26 | N2CQR | -26 | PA1GSJ | 1343 | 835 | ||||||
2009-04-19 18:24 | N2CQR | -23 | PA1GSJ | 1343 | 835 | ||||||
2009-04-19 14:24 | N2CQR | -22 | M0WQR | 1601 | 995 |
Hey, is this a first? Has anyone else run WSPR DSB?
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Sicily, Mt. Etna... and The Godfather
It was COLD up there. We didn't stay long. Within 90 minutes of this picture being taken, the kids were back at sea level, and in the pool at 80F.
Here is a GoogleEarth View. The yellow marker shows the place at which we took the picture of us in the snow. (The Google shots were from May/June 2006).
Those of you who are fans of The Godfather movie will remember this scene:
Well, here we are, in the same place (but without the shotguns):
Francis Ford Coppola filmed most of the Sicilian scenes not in Western Sicily (where the village of Corleone really is) but in the East, near the beach resort of Taormina, in the village of Savoca. The Bar Vitelli is where Michael Corleone met Apollonia's father. Savoca also has the church where Michael and Apollonia began their brief and unfortunately explosive marriage.
We really liked Sicily. It is a beautiful place, rich in history, and with really nice people.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
In Sicily
Beautiful place. Will talk about this in next podcast. 73
Saturday, April 11, 2009
SolderSmoke Podcast #105
On #105:
http://www.soldersmoke.com
Italy Earthquake
WSPR DSB, WSPR MP3
SBL-1 Blues
Clockwork minimalism
QST articles (design, HBR RX)
Marconi
Spring SPRAT
Blog stuff
ECHO-QSO with Mike, WA6ARA
MAILBAG
Happy Easter!
Friday, April 10, 2009
Parachutes and QRSS
Howdy Bill, It’s Kevin here in Montana, the ex-Smokejumper. I’ve been meaning to write again. Thanks for the nice comment on SS #100 I got a kick out of it. Anyhow, just thought I’d drop you a note to let you know I finally had a weekend to design and build up a QRSS beacon. I used a Cypress PSoC CY24123A uC to function as the Crystal Oscillator, and keyer. The final is two paralleled BS-170 MOSFETs running in Class-E mode to give me about 560mW out with a 7.5volt Lantern battery as my supply, total system power efficiency is about 63%(RFout over DC in), I’m sure this could be significantly improved, but good enough for now. After several hours of tweaking the capacitor values I finally got the oscillator to fall into the 100Hz window. That was MUCH harder than I had anticipated. With the original version I switched the PA on and off for true QRSS 3 CW, but found this made a significant frequency drift problem. So I added a couple parts and modified the PSoC code a bit, now its running CWFSK, switching about 1.1pF on and off one leg of the XTAL, shifting the frequency about 10Hz and much more stable.
My first tests were with the board sitting on the bench under the desk lamp. This caused all kinds of drift problems. I then put the beacon in a Tupperware container and placed it inside a soft case cooler. I was looking around the shack for a blanket or something to further improve the insulation, when low and behold sitting in a garbage sack… was a condemned FS-14 parachute (equivalent to the SF-10A) that I was planning using for something useful. So I wrapped the chute around the cooler and stuffed it all back in the garbage sack. Surprisingly, temperature stabilization was achieved, beyond my expectations.
The beacon is running good now, nice and stable. I’m fairly certain, that in the history of mankind, no one has ever used a parachute to improve the temperature drift characteristics of a QRSS beacon. Anyhow, I plan on having it fired up quite a bit, so that my antenna is actually put to some good use. It seems I rarely get a chance for one to one contacts anymore. Most of my free time is spent designing and building the radios I never use. Ha. I guess the design and building is the real fun for me.
Anyhow, I’ll talk to you later. 73s Kevin, AA7YQ
PS the Beacon is sending “AA7YQ” followed by a several second pause. It’s showing up on the K6HX grabber between 10.140050 and 10.140060.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
2N35s, 1955... and some inspiration from AA1TJ
From Michael, AA1TJ:
Bill, I was re-reading Ade, W0RSP's "History of QRP" last night; especially that last chapter on transistor rigs. It dawned on me that the two 2N35 transistors that I'm presently using in my 40m transmitter were built two months before Bob, W7UUZ's famous, maiden transistor QRP contacts in August of 1955. While we can't go back and beat Lindbergh's first solo crossing of the Atlantic, for example, a fellow could re-live some of the excitement by building a replica of The Spirit of St. Louis and taking it up for a spin. If anything, it gives one a better appreciation of the hurdles those early trailblazers had to leap.
That's Michael's 2N35 rig pictured above. For more details see:
http://mjrainey.googlepages.com/80mqrptransmitter;circa1955
Michael also put a really great message on QRP-L earlier this week. I hope he reprints that on his blog.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
SolderSmoke: On Sale on Thai Beaches!
Hi Bill Now for the full story
Life was so uncomplicated and peaceful before soldersmoke!
Last October I was lying on the beach in Pattaya City Thailand. I was just lying there enjoying a cold rice beer watching the various peddlers trudging along the sand. I wasn't bothering anyone and thought I was enjoying my retired life style. (Little did I know what was about to happen). Casually the wife reminded me there was a Ham club meeting in about three hours, I should hold off on another beer. Ok, I'll manage till later.
Pattaya Thailand has a great little Ham Radio club with locals from all parts of the world enjoying the one universal hobby without boundaries.
We showed up at the meeting on time and found a nice corner table. ( now the plug for the club - the meetings are the Friday after the first Sunday of every month and are held at Jimbos Bar). After about an half a beer a friend from England wandered over and sat next to me. He produced a CD from his pocket and said is was SolderSmoke, would I like to buy a copy for 100Baht. (approx. 3.00US) . As with most normal people, my first question was, what is soldersmoke? This was my first big mistake. I should have said not interested and looked for other friends that were arriving. But, no, I had to ask what was SolderSmoke.
My friend tried to explain, but feel short of being able to fully relay the meaning of the word SolderSmoke. If I remember correctly there were episodes 1 thru 80 something. I took the CD back to my house. and the next day spent over 5 hours glued to the CD player. My world was beginning to crumble.
I listened to more episodes. and started to think in terms of QRSS, QRPp, long wires etc. This new terminology was fascinating. I grew up in Idaho and was first licensed in 1963. I still have my first rigs that consisted of a Hammarlund HQ-100 and a Knight Kit T-60. I apparently had the knack at age 13 or so, but didn't know what it was called then. hi hi
In a couple of SolderSmoke episodes there was mention of a Drake 2B, a great receiver in all respects. I found myself wanting one (I sure didn't need one), and looking every where. I bought one in great condition with the original for sale tag still on it. It even had the crystal calibrator installed.
Now my vocabulary has expanded to whisperers, grabbers, mickums, reggies, knights of the realm and other terms before unknown to my vocabulary. Fessenden was a terrific individual although I'd never heard the name before episode 90 something. I started to build a QRSS beacon. I am in constant contact with Michael Rainey , AA1TJ. He is a great guy and has helped with a lot of questions.
For the first time in several years I am involved with something I enjoy. This is really fun I said to myself after fabricating a one transistor transmitter patterned after the discontinued ONER. 0-Yes let's not forget Mr. Doug Demaw, I bought the QRP notebook and Solid State Design (I didn't tell the XYL how much this book cost).
I've always been taught that addictions are bad things. I am in serious trouble now. I am thoroughly and completely addicted to SolderSmoke. I get impatient and unpredictable when the podcasts are a little late being posted on the internet. It's just like getting your fix for the week. Yes, fix for the week because it doesn't last the full two weeks. hi hi
I guess this is a non e-cursing thank you kind of Email. SolderSmoke has ruined my life, but my new life is much better with it.
Hope this epistle hasn't bored you to much. Your providing a great focal point for fellow knack victims.
Only thing left to say Bill, is KEEP ON SMOKIN!
Thanks for SolderSmoke
73 de
Stephen (Himself) (seems like everyone has a nickname)
HS0ZHB / NM7J
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
More Seismic Action
The USGS site is really very useful and up-to-date. Lots of data. For example, we learned that the compression wave from the 5.6 jolt took about 15 seconds to reach Rome. The people up in Abruzzo are really suffering and each one of these aftershocks makes things worse for them.
MAG | UTC DATE-TIME y/m/d h:m:s | LAT deg | LON deg | DEPTH km | Region | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MAP | 5.6 | 2009/04/07 17:47:38 | 42.349 | 13.405 | 13.1 | CENTRAL ITALY |
MAP | 4.5 | 2009/04/07 17:32:53 | 32.984 | 47.833 | 10.0 | IRAN-IRAQ BORDER REGION |
MAP | 5.0 | 2009/04/07 15:18:41 | 37.620 | -17.441 | 8.3 | AZORES-CAPE ST. VINCENT RIDGE |
MAP | 4.7 | 2009/04/07 14:50:02 | 46.099 | 151.609 | 58.1 | KURIL ISLANDS |
MAP | 2.9 | 2009/04/07 14:46:42 | 33.883 | -116.872 | 14.4 | SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA |
MAP | 4.5 | 2009/04/07 14:20:10 | -7.970 | 122.916 | 236.7 | FLORES SEA |
MAP | 5.1 | 2009/04/07 13:29:48 | -6.976 | 129.425 | 69.7 | BANDA SEA |
MAP | 2.9 | 2009/04/07 13:10:43 | 19.256 | -65.076 | 63.6 | VIRGIN ISLANDS REGION |
MAP | 2.9 | 2009/04/07 10:08:55 | 32.209 | -116.626 | 0.0 | BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO |
MAP | 4.9 | 2009/04/07 09:26:31 | 42.336 | 13.360 | 10.0 | CENTRAL ITALY |
Monday, April 6, 2009
Earthquake Hits Central Italy
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Deep Solar Minimum
April 1, 2009: The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days: plot. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.
Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87%).
It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
"This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
For the rest of the article:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm?list830785
The Siren Song of WSPR...WSPR DSB?
This morning I downloaded K1JT's WSPR program and was very pleased to find that it runs nicely on this old, rickety Windows 2000 machine. (I pushed the envelope a bit and tried to get it to run on my recently revived Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CS, but it didn't seem to like Windows 3.1. ) I have on the workbench the plans for W3PM's bare bones WSPR transceiver and the WSPR care package sent over by Jim AL7RV.
Here is my plan: Make W3PM's rig even simpler. TX only (at first) and Double Sideband. Maybe I'll just put an SBL-1 mixer between the oscillator and the RF amp in my current Visual MEPT transmitter. (I'll make it switchable so that I can go back to our beloved visual mode whenever I want.) Then add W3PM's audio amplifiers between line out on the sound card and the audio input port on the SBL-1.
What do you guys think? WSPR DSB? The other sideband should fall FAR outside the band, and it will almost certainly be completely down in the noise for anyone not running ARGO or SPECTRAN-like software.