Mars Star Party from La Palma (video)

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BITX 2040 Build Update #9: On-the-air Observations

The BITX 2040 has moved from the bench to the operating position and is producing a steady stream of contacts on 20 and 40 meters.  In the picture above it is the rig with the copper-clad front panel (the BITX 17 is below it).  It has already crossed the pond on both bands.

Some observations:

I get significantly more power out on 40 than on 20:  about 7.2 watts PEP on 40 and about 4.4 watts PEP on 20.  I saw a QST article that showed similar frequency/power out variations from IRF510 amps.   But I notice I get more power out from my 17 meter rig.  On that rig I am using trifilar (9:1 Z) transformer instead of the standard BITX bifilars. 

My 40 meter receiver is LOUD.   Too much AF out.  I am not used to having this problem!  On this rig I am using the same discrete component 2n3904 2n3906 transformer-less circuit that I used in the BITX 17.  But AF out on 40 was so loud that I had to go back and add 20 k ohms to the top of the volume control pot.   I didn't have this problem with the 17 meter rig, and I didn't have it on 20 with this rig.  Any ideas why this rig would be so loud on 40?

I still want to go in and fine tune the crystal filters in both rigs.  I am studying the various software packages out there (especially Wes's LADPAC).  I hope to get rid of the ripple.   

In most of my contacts with these rigs, I end up describing the circuit and its Indian origins.  Most people are really fascinated.  Yesterday W1IDL in Michigan suggested that I contact my Indian friends and get some assistance in making some Hindi or Urdu labels for the rig and the controls.   I think that is a very cool idea. 

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Coils, Magnets, and Special Relativity (video)

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Inductive Reactance and Special Relativity

Bill,

I'd been meaning to share these stories with you after I read your book a couple years ago but I never got to it.  I thought you might enjoy them, from an "engineering perspective", I guess.

One of the courses I had to take for my undergrad was an engineering physics type class.  I loved it.  I think a lot of hams seem to have more curiosity about the physics of electronics than regular non-ham engineers, at least that's how it's always seemed to me.  Anyway, I'm sending you a snapshot of the relativistic length contraction figure in the book "Concepts of Modern Physics", 4th Ed by Arthur Beiser.  I thought you'd enjoy it as it is almost identical to what you mentioned in Soldersmoke (from your "Atoms to Amperes" book I think).

Hopefully there's enough resolution there to make it out.  Basically, when you flow current in the same direction in both wires, they attract.  That's because the electrons see effectively many more positively charged nuclei from the other wire than they do other electrons due to the nuclei distances being compressed by the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction (later refined by Einstein). 

When I first saw this, in my early 20s, I was completely floored!  Nowhere had I ever learned anything like this from the ham license manuals or even my basic physics course.  The implications were also very profound -- magnetism was nothing more than electrostatic attraction, the attraction between charges.  The "electromagnetic" force was really just an electric force.  Relative motion between charges gives the illusion of "magnetism". 

Much later, I listened to some of the old Feynmann lectures.  In them at one point he adamantly proclaimed that there's only the electric force between charges, and there is no magnetic force!  I still find this confusing.  Recently I brought this up to a university RF engineering professor.  I wondered why we dealt with Maxwell's equations when in reality the magnetic field is an illusion.  The "real" formulas come from Feynmann's theory of quantum electrodynamics!  His reply was something along the lines of Maxwell's equations being a solution of quantum theory that worked well for our purposes.  To be honest, I didn't really understand his reply and I'm still skeptical!  I think his point was that the QED calculations are overly complicated and unnecessary for most problems we deal with, things like patterns from an antenna.  I don't think Maxwell's equations appropriately describe things like lasers though, which are more quantum in nature with the coherent beam.

FYI, most engineering students I ran across had only passing curiosity for these things.  Only in graduate school did I start to find people curious enough to really try to understand "what lies beneath" some of this stuff, mainly this physics.  Honestly not even everyone in grad school was all that captivated.  As you've said before, there's a lot of "turn the crank" mentality in engineering where you wade through mathematics to get answers, not always thinking about the physics.  It's even worse in the digital world, where everything gets boiled down to computer code! 

One more quick thing.  I talked to a physics prof once, asking him if there was any research happening in his department focused on electromagnetics and radio waves, etc.  His reply: "radio waves are nothing more than the result of accelerating electrons".  Period!  Discussion over.  In other words, that's ancient history.  Engineers are still very much involved with new technologies involving antennas and amplifiers, etc.  But as far as the physicists are concerned, I get the impression that our whole field is pretty ho-hum.  But he was right about accelerating electrons, I also found out later.  And it doesn't have to be electrons.  Anything carrying charge undergoing acceleration will emit photons.  That's another crazy situation that I only more recently learned.

Hope that was entertaining!

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BITX 2040 Build Update #8: All Boxed Up and Ready to Go!

Its kind of scary:  my BITX 20/40 is starting to look vaguely appliance-like!   Once again I find myself missing having the rig exposed -- sans-cabinet -- on the bench.  For me, the contacts made under those conditions, with solder smoke still in the air, are the most satisfying and memorable.  

But anyway, it is in the box now.  I think it looks pretty good.  I enjoyed working with the copper foil.  I did some trial and error testing and found that ordinary Krazy Glue is the best adhesive for joining the plastic material on the back of the foil to the wood of the box.  I like the look of the foil -- it reminds me of the copper (or gold?)  foil covering that they put on some spacecraft. 

There is always the danger that a rig that works well on the bench will go into rebellious oscillation when confined to a metallic box.   That didn't happen with mine. 

We discovered that the wood in the box is not actually walnut.  But I'm not complaining because whatever it is, it is very easy to work with.  BITX or Minima builders should consider these boxes (available via Amazon). 

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G0MGX's Minima

Wow, Mark didn't waste any time in building his Minima. FB OM.   His web site has a lot of good info on this project:  http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/


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BITX 20/40 Update #7: Cabinetry and Socketry

With the 20 Meter Oscillation Exorcism behind me, I have decided to take a break from electronics and do bit of woodwork.   I took the walnut (I think) box that I bought via Amazon and cut out a big piece of the wood on the front.  That's where the rectangular piece of copper clad board will go -- it will be the front panel, supporting the AF gain control, the bandswitch, the main tuning control, and the mic jack.   A similar copper clad board will be on the back, this one supporting the antenna jack,  speaker jack and 12V input jack (with space for a linear amplifier T/R control jack).  (George Dobbs, G3RJV, calls this the "socketry.")

That beautiful copper sheeting will line the inside of the box.

I found the soft wood on this box to be very easy to work with.  The little saw pictured above made the woodwork easy.

I have boiled linseed oil and clear polyurethane for the finish. 

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BITX20/40 Update #6: 20 Meter Exorcism

The transmitter was working fine on 40, but was horribly unstable on 20. In the past, this kind of thing would really drive me nuts, but experience has made me more patient. I know that "taming the beast" is part of the homebrew process. 

I knew that layout was part of the problem:  I had significantly less room on the board with this rig than I'd had with the BITX17:  the additional bandpass filter and low pass filter, and the associated relays, used up a lot of copper clad real estate. So by the time I built the PA chain, the inputs were too close to the outputs.

The fact that the rig was stable on 40 but not on 20 led me to believe that this was not a problem of insufficient decoupling.  Instead, I thought that I was getting additional inductive feedback at the higher frequency.

I noticed that the instability disappeared when I put the 1X scope probe on the input to the first amp in the RF chain (Q14). That was an important clue.  Looking closely at the circuit, I realized that the base of Q14 had a long lead (several inches) up to the low pass filter.  I had experienced problems with this lead on the BITX 17 project and had cured it with a relay at the low pass filter -- this relay took one end of the lead out of the circuit on transmit, preventing it from becoming a little radiator.  I used that mod in this rig, and figured that that cured the trouble.  Wrong.   The other end of that lead was still connected to the input to the RF power chain.  It was picking up enough RF to send the PA chain into oscillation.

I put a SECOND relay at the other end of the line.  That took it completely out of the circuit.  And the instability disappeared.  I fired up the rig and worked California on 20.  Very satisfying.   

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BITX 20/40 Build Update #5: It is ALIVE!

I got the BITX 20/40 on the air this morning.  The receiver has been working for a week or so, but as usual it was a bit of a struggle to tame the transmitter.  I got up early this morning and started poking and probing.  I played with the driver and final coils a bit.  I had used the same trifilar toroids that I'd used in the BITX 17, but this rig didn't seem to like them. So I went with FT-50-37 bifilars -- that seemed to work better.  That IRF-510 seems to put out about seven watts on 40.  (I still need to tame the transmitter on 20).  The 40 meter signal looked great on the 'scopes (RIGOL and Tek!).  Shortly before 8 am I worked AD4SY who reported that I was filling his shack with booming audio.  Life is good.  

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Digi 'scope, Analog 'scope

Carl (M0ICR ex 2E0TEC) saved the day with my Tek 465 -- he sent the replacement HV multiplier that put the 'scope back in action.  (Ace Tek repairman Tad WA1FQO made the repair.  Tad sells Tek scopes on E-bay -- check out his products: Search for fqo63 on ebay.)

Carl notes a number of similarities between our workbenches and recent projects.  All he needs now is a Drake 2-B!

Alan Wolke said he'd be interested in my reactions to having both a digi scope and an analog scope on the bench.  I can already see areas where one might be a bit better than the other.  The Tek is better at watching a fast moving audio or SSB waveform.  But the Rigol doea all kinds of math tricks.  Check out the FFT function shown on Carl's page:  http://iqrp.net/

Bill,

I am very pleased that you finally got it working with the help of brothers from the fraternity.  Having listened to your latest Podcast I think that must be your alter ego!  I have A Tek 465, Rigol 100MHz DS1102E and have built 2 Bitx, one for 20m and the other for right bands- using a DDS VFO  (3 if you include the 80m version by Steve Drury G6ALU - look up MKARS80) ...I also have 2 copies of SSD!

My website is here:  www.iqrp.net  where you can see both scopes in my shack and images of my Bitx and my Hans Summers WSPR beacon!

I have just returned from my local radio club social meeting (the Radio Society of Harrow) and took great pleasure in listening to Soldersmoke 158 whilst driving there ... half on the way there and the other half on the way back.

Very best wishes from London (where it is cold, wet and miserable !)

72/73 de Carl M0ICR (ex 2E0TEC from Nov 13)
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SolderSmoke Podcast #158: BITX 20/40, Farhan's "Minima", BITX Bandsweep

SolderSmoke Podcast #158 is available:

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke158.mp3

January 20, 2014
MLK Day. Tough winter.  Shack heated by Heathkit.
BITX 20/40 Almost done:
Bandswitching arrangement.
VFO construction using spreadsheets.
2N2222s wired in backwards! (CBE not EBC! Who knew?)
Other amusing building errors.
Crystal filter evaluation -- the G3UUR method.
Sweeping a filter with an Arduino DDS.
Building a BITX in LTSpice.
New Rigol 'scope (now 100 MHz).
Tek 465 REBORN!
QRP HATERS -- They are out there!
MAILBAG.
BITX 20/40 dual band bandsweep

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

John Dobson (Sidewalk Astronomer, Telescope Maker) RIP

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/John-Dobson-1915ndash2014-240456881.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