Those of you who have been reading Pete N6QW's blog (and all of you should be reading it!) will have seen a recent post about his efforts to modernize (digitize) the VFO in an old tube-type Ten Tec Triton IV model 544. Pete complained that --oddly -- in spite of replacing the old analog tube-type VFO, the rig with a modern, rock-stable Si5351 VFO, the old rig CONTINUED TO DRIFT. That had Pete and a number of us scratching our heads. How could that be?
Pete then completely removed the Si5351 VFO from the old boatanchor. Sitting on his bench, all by itself, THE DAMN THING EXHIBITED ALL THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ANALOG VFO THERMAL DRIFT. Wow! Why? Pete was really pulling his hair out on this one.
We immediately began to see if others were getting the same results. Nope. None of our Si5351 VFOs were doing this. This was REALLY strange.
At this point we had to turn to a real Arduino expert, a guy who I had met during my time in Italy: Luigi Bugiardo from the Arduino research center in Bocalupo, Calabria. Pete gave him remote access to his computer and he began to poke around.
It didn't take long. Luigi quickly found the problem: He found several lines of malicious code "embedded in the Si5351.h and si5351.cpp files –sort of lurking out there and not easy to spot."
Pete then removed this code and -- BINGO -- no more drift.
Now I know some of you guys are thinking that this was just a bit of harmless fun. But Pete is really angry about this. He feels like he has been played for a sucker by some ham who was pretending to collaborate with him. Pete sees this as yet another violation of the unwritten ham code of conduct. To him this is another intrusion of computer/hacker noob hazing into the ham radio world. And worst yet, he thinks this malicious code came to him because of this involvement in the podcast and his blog -- that participation resulted in the widespread exposure that got him into this mess.
Pete is so upset that he has vowed to drop out of the podcast and shut down his blog.
So come on fellows. It is time to 'fess up. If you did this, or if you think you know who did this, please send an e-mail to me at soldersmoke@yahoo.com I think being able to pinpoint the prankster will help Pete deal with this whole thing, and hopefully get him back into the SolderSmoke...
ReturnLoss of UHF series adapters
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This article reports a simple but robust measurement of the ReturnLoss of a
pair of UHF adapters from 1 to 501MHz. Load selection To measure ReturnLoss
of ...
58 minutes ago