Category: Juliano — Pete

SolderSmoke Podcast #189: Juliano Blue, FET Amp, Si5351 QSK, Bill LC VFO, QSOs


 SolderSmoke Podcast #189 is available:

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke189.mp3

 Billy in Europe. Bill in Virtual Reality.

Great News: Little Gonzalo is “all clear.” Thanks for the help.

BENCH REPORTS:
Pete paints the rigs blue.
Pete’s FET amplifier project with FET switching and key pad
Using an Si5351 for CW offset and QSK.

Bill working on VFO for a rig built around HRO dial and gear box.
HRO gears seem a bit loose. What should I do?
The search for an Imperial Whitworth.
For variable caps, brass is better, but two bearings beats brass.

 QSO REPORTS
Pete having fun with homebrew rigs.
Bill works K3MRK, WA3O, W4OP, W1VLF and N6ORS

MAILBAG:
Dallas CBLA
Conventional Current Flow Controversy
“I regret ever listening to your podcast!”
LCR recommendations

Gonzalo just turned TWO and is doing very well

Building a VFO. A BIG VFO. IF options?

Once again, The Radio Gods have Spoken (TRGHS). An off-hand comment at the Manassas Hamfest, a bit of encouragement from Pete Juliano, and the next thing you know Armand WA1UQO has sent me this beautiful National HRO dial and reduction drive. This thing is so nice… Well, put it this way: this is the first time I’m building a rig around the dial!

Further evidence that TRGHS: I needed something on which to base the HRO dial and a box for the VFO. Wouldn’t you know it: That Whole Foods “grilling plank” that I bought a few weeks ago was PERFECTLY sized for this task. Eerie, don’t you think? As for the VFO box, well TRGHS again: pictured above you see a side view of the box from one of the Heath QF-1 Q multipliers that I cannibalized for the variable caps. Finally, for the main tuning cap, I took another look at that old brass variable cap that I took out of a 1930’s era British regen (pictured above). It had been hopelessly stuck for a long time. I twisted it a bit and was amazed to see that it is stuck no more. TRGHS! (I just need to find a suitable nut so that I can mount the old cap in the QF-1 box.)

I’m thinking that this VFO will be the heart of a general coverage shortwave superhet receiver. I want filters for AM and SSB and I’d like it to cover 5 MHz to 10 MHz. I’ve been noodling various IF possibilities, but concerns about birdies and spurs keep driving me back to 455 kHz. I have a crystal-mechanical filter for that freq. And a big box of 455 kc transformers. What do you guys think of this option?

SolderSmoke Podcast #188: Blue Rig, 6U8 RX, Dial strings, Hamfest, VFO Builds, MAILBAG

SolderSmoke Podcast #188 is available.

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke188.mp3

 Audio “sparkle”

Bench Reports:
Pete: Blue Rig, Amplifier Project, LBS and Simpleceivers around the world
Si5351s in the new Elecraft KX2

 Bill:
Mighty Midget Mate 6U8 RX Refinement
Using a Millen 61455 IF can
Broad, but beautiful. But not as nice as PA3GSV’s
Tweaking a VFO the old fashioned way
Reduction Drive Re-works.
A Confession: Using Amplified Computer Speakers

 Back to the lipsticked pig. Pete convinces Bill to fix the S38-E
dial cord.

Manassas Hamfest Report.

Field Day.

Mysteries:

Who is WV2YAU

Who sold Bill the hombrew SWR meter at Manassas?

MAILBAG

Ryuu’s Receiver (Superhet using Si5351 and Color Display with IF at 10.7 MHz from JA2NKD)

The influence of Pete Juliano is spreading far and wide. Those little color screens attached to Si5351s seem especially popular in Japan. Above is the receiver of Ryuu JA2NKD. Below is the schematic. Click on it for a better look, or use this link:
http://ja2nkd.c.blog.so-net.ne.jp/_images/blog/_206/JA2NKD/7MHzcolorLCDSchematics.jpg?c=a1

Ryuu’s blogs are here : http://ja2nkd.blog.so-net.ne.jp/
and here: http://ja2nkd.blogspot.jp/
They are in Japanese. Google Chrome does a poor job at translating them, but you can get the gist. In any case the pictures are great and the schematics are understandable by all of us. Thanks Ryuu!

JH8SST Build’s Pete’s Simpleceiver (video)

Jun JH8SST made this nice video about his version of Pete Juliano’s Simpleceiver. I like the approach of putting the stages on separate boards, but perhaps Jun could have made things easier by using Manhattan-style construction on those boards. And of course I like the breadboard-style aluminum sheet. FB Jun.

Jun writes:

I’ve built a simpleceiver, which is a modified version. My first main board didn’t work because of several problems, and that’s why I decided to divide the board into several separated PCB’s with some circuit modifications.
RF and Mixer stages are original, but I employed an 8pole 9MHz ladder Xtal filter. The J310 X 2 is used in IF amplifiers, but load resonant circuit is modified to use a type 10K coil form and a ceramic capacitor.
J310 product detector is original and built on a tiny PCB, as shown in attached photo and YouTube Video.
This modified Simpleceiver has high sensitivity and more than enough gain. I needed to reduce RF/IF gain to eliminate product detector distortion caused by stronger signals.
This simpleceiver works really nicely.
I’m going to re-modify it to make it as original as possible.
The block diagram is: J310X2 RF－DBM－9MHz 8 pole X’tal Filter－J310X2 IF－J310X2 IF－J310 product detector－AF μA741－AF LM380 with NFB.
I’m going to re-modify it as: J310X2 RF－DBM－J310X2 IF－12MHz 4 pole X’tal Filter－J310X2 IF－J310 product detector－AF μA741－AF LM380 with NFB.
I’m also going to add an AGC system using a modified W1FB AGC circuit.

NP0 Is the Way to Go!

Much to the consternation of Pete “Digi” Juliano, I have been working on analog LC VFOs for simple superhet receivers. As described in earlier posts, I recently converted an old Barebones CW superhet to 40 meter SSB. At first, the VFO (2 -2.3 MHz) was not stable enough — it would slowly drift in frequency. (“We have a solution for that,” chuckled Pete.) My first effort at stabilization involved replacing the toroidal coil. The material in the core is sensitive to temperature changes and this can lead to instability. I found my traditional cardboard tube from a coat hanger, and made a coil of the needed inductance (you can see it in the pictures). This yielded some improvement in stability, but it was still drifting.

Next I tried taking out all the silver mica and disc ceramic caps in the LC circuit of the oscillator and replacing them with NP0 ceramic caps. The feedback caps are in the box below the tuning cap, but you can see some of the little NP0s on the outside of the box, connected to a rotary switch. This serves as the equivalent of variable “Bandset” variable cap, with the tuning cap serving as the “Bandspread.” I have seven switch positions, each covering about 40 KHz (with some overlap). This gives me all of the phone band and the bottom 30 kHz of the CW band.

Switching to NP0 caps really did the trick. The receiver is now very stable. When I told Farhan about my VFO woes, he mentioned that he’d had very good stability results with surface mount caps. I wonder if this success has more to do with those caps being NP0 than with their surface mount configuration.

Here is a good description of NP0:

NP0 Ceramic Capacitors are single-layer ceramic capacitors made from a mixture of titanates.

A NP0 ceramic capcitor is an ultrastable or temperature compensating capacitor. It is one of the most highly stable capacitors. It has very predictable temperature coefficients (TCs) and, in general, does not age with time.
NP0 stands for negative-positive 0 ppm/°C, meaning that for negative or positive shifts in temperature, the capacitance changes 0 part per million, meaning that it has a flat response across a wide range of temperatures; the capacitance of the NP0 capacitor stays constant (at the same value) despite variations in temperature.

From: http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/What-is-a-NPO-ceramic-capacitor

But I think it is a stretch to claim that these marvelous caps do not “age with time!” That would be a really astounding property of the titanium dielectric. That would be a Negative-Positive Zero FLUX capacitor, right?

SolderSmoke Podcast 187: 2nd Anniversary N6QW. Dayton. Bench Reports. Mailbag


 SolderSmoke Podcast #187 is available:

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke187.mp3

Second Anniversary of Pete Juliano’s arrival on the SolderSmoke Podcast.

 Dayton and FDIM underway

Bench Reports:
Pete:
— Repurposing old Circuitry
— Pete’s small Display
— New Transmitter
— LBS in Japan and at Dayton

 Bill:
— S38-E The lipstick has worn off.
— Reduction drive for the Mighty Midget’s Mate
— Back to the Barbados Barebones Receiver:
Which LO to use for 40 Meters with a 5 MHz IF?
Sideband Inversion and “Lower Sideband” filters.
Eradicating WWV with parts from AA1TJ
Improving VFO stability
A bandspread/bandset arrangement with fixed caps
Soul in the Old Machine

 “The Amateur is FRIENDLY…”

MAILBAG

Putting Junk Mail to Excellent Use: Tony G4WIF’s Proto-boards


Tony’s Version of Audio Section of N6QW’s LBS Receiver

Tony Fishpool, G4WIF writes:

I’ve been intrigued by Pete’s matrix pad method. Of course, few of us have the machinery to mill them as Pete does, but etching is a possibility. Now some of Pete’s boards clearly have a lot of noodling behind them. His boards are quite big with little areas of pads and space between. The layout for the whole project has clearly been considered in advance.
I wanted a board that I could make modular, take little time to etch and adapt for the circumstances. These “proto-boards” are the result.

The project is Farhan’s “sweeperino” and one board is for the Si570, and the other the AD8307.
The Si570 board is now complete and working:



The PCB method is pure Chuck Adams. His videos on YouTube describe the toner transfer method better than I could.

The only difference for me is that my glossy paper comes free from travel agent brochures.
Just express a passing interest in Viking River Cruises and you will never pay for PCB paper ever again!
There is a free printing only version of the software I use, so if SolderSmoke listeners want to use the proto-board design, I will happily email them the files.


Kind regards
Tony G4WIF

Hallicrafters S38-E Saved! it is not a “Pig with Lipstick.” It Sounds Good! (Video) (And Radio Moscow recordings)

You guys know how it is: You get tired of struggling with an old piece of gear. You put it aside, thinking that you might never work on it again. But it sits there in the corner, sort of looking at you. A few days or weeks or years pass and you think, hey, I’ll take one more quick look at this thing to see if I can get it going.

That’s what happened to me this weekend with the Hallicrafters S38-E. I hooked up the isolation transformer and put a fuse in the primary. I checked the wiring of my rewound antenna coil primary and found that I had connected it wrong. Duh. I then found that the antenna tuned circuit tracks fairly well with the tuned circuits in the local oscillator.

I hooked it up to my 40 meter dipole and fired it up. As evening rolled around the shortwave bands started to perk up. The Chinese Broadcast stations were there, as was that fire and brimstone preacher Brother so-and-so. But then I tuned into Radio Havana Cuba and the guy was talking about homebrew shortwave antennas. Could it be? Yes indeed. It was Arnie Coro CO2KK. The Radio Gods had spoken! They clearly had wanted me to get this old rig going.

I still have a few things to do: I need to fix the front panel light. I want to put in a three-wire (with ground) AC cord. Perhaps a real BFO (the original circuit seems to run out of steam with strong SSB signals). And I need to spruce up the alignment on the 1.7-5 Mc and 13-30 Mc bands.
I think Pete and I may have been too harsh on this old receiver (calling it a pig with lipstick and all that). It is clearly not a great communications receiver, but it is nice for casual shortwave listening.

And here is a bonus treat for you guys: Remember Radio Moscow in the bad old days? Yesterday I found a site with good recordings of some of their 1965 broadcasts. This is just what you would have heard coming out of an S38-E in 1965:


1625 Tubes and Si5351 Chips: JH8SST’s FB Rig

Peter has been helping Jun JH8SST and other Japanese hams get their Si5351 synthesizers working with various displays. Jun has had some great success as you can see in the above video. I really like the combination of old (1625) and new (Si5351) technology.

Jun is a long-time homebrewer who as built some amazing stuff. Check out the pictures on his QRZ.com page:

And look at his cool 128×128 TFT display:

Other videos here:

A Major Change For SolderSmoke: Introducing the WireWrapRap Podcast!

A New Direction for SolderSmoke

Introducing Our New Podcast: “WireWrapRap”

Attentive listeners have probably noticed that for some time now the podcast has been drifting in a new direction. Some have been concerned by this change. I myself, as you know, have shared in many of these misgivings. But I have become convinced that it is time for a major change in direction. We’ve been doing this for more than ten years — we are one of the oldest ham radio podcasts. It is time for a change.
A number of people have encouraged me to make to this change. My co-host Pete Juliano N6QW is clearly the main influence. Pete has made me see the errors of my Ludite ways. He taught me that it is time to put away the Dymo tape and get with it with glowing numerals. Whenever I started getting enthused about VXOs or about Permeability Tuned Oscillators using brass screws moving through hand-wound coils, Pete was there to remind me of the beauty, simplicity, and efficiency of Arduino Microcontrollers and Si5351 chips. Paul Darlington M0XPD contributed an element of old world legitimacy to this push for modernity. Tom Hall AK2B was another influence — whenever I was on the verge of quitting, he’d Skype in from the Big Apple and get me back on the digital track. And we can’t forget Farhan over in India – as soon as he started putting Arduinos and Si570s in his Minima, I knew this was really, as the kids say, “a thing.”
So anyway, it is time for a change. I know many of you may find this shocking, so it is probably best for me to just go ahead and say it: We are changing the name of the podcast and we are changing its focus.
n Instead of SolderSmoke, the new name will be “WireWrapRap.” Wire wrap is the solder-less wiring technique often used in computer circuitry. We hope that the “Rap” thing will be especially helpful in attracting young people – especially those Maker Millennials — to the show. And, you know, soldering just seems so 20th century.
n Instead of traditional homebrew radio, the show will be focused on Mini Computers (especially the Raspberry Pi), Software Defined Radio, Digital Signal Processing, Microcontrollers (especially the Arduino), and the use of smart phones in ham radio
n Obviously this implies a move away from minimalist radio and QRP. So yes, we are going maximalist and we are going QRO. And we are getting more involved in contesting (see below).
Now I know what some of you are thinking – that this must be part of our long-standing quest for sponsorship and that this is all about money. But that’s only part of it. Yes, we have secured a lucrative sponsorship arrangement with a company involved in microcontrollers, small computers and smart phones that is focused on the millennial market. But we’re really doing this for the good of our listeners.
Don’t worry, you will find many of your favorite parts of SolderSmoke in the new show. They will be the same, only different. For example, instead of the “Bandsweep” segments that we used to do, now we are going to have “Codesweep” (and it’s not about Morse). Where we used to have SolderSmoke Mailbag, well, don’t worry — we are going to continue to have a segment that will allow for listener input. We going to call it “Pi Hole.” We’ll only be accepting listener input via TEXT messages or Tweets – we are, after all, trying to be modern. Along the same lines, we will be distributing the podcast exclusively via Soundcloud. So get with it gentlemen! Get into the cloud!
In the new and improved podcast we want to explore the new and exciting digital modes. We plan segments on all the new ones: PSK-99, Opera, WSPR, SNICKR, Throb, Thor, Piccolo, Oreo, Oregano, you know, all those weird sounds you’ve been hearing near what used to be considered the CW portion of the band. It will be such fun! I can’t wait to decode some Oregano!
Smart phones, are, of course, the future of ham radio, and we intend to be fully into those little magic boxes. I don’t know if you guys realize it, but all of that ugly dusty junk in your shack can be replaced by a few lines of code from the App Store. That room you used to call “the shack” can be converted into the Yoga studio or knitting room that your wife has been longing for! Now you can carry your station with you wherever you go and autonomously participate in contests from stations around the world. Imagine the thrill of learning that while you were playing golf or bowling, you were also WINNING a major DX contest from a “station” in Ulan Bator. And that ALL of your reports were 59! It’s like owning your own ham radio drone! Congrats old man. YOU WON! Welcome to the 21st century! That’s the kind of operation we are going to explore on WireWrapRap!
For those of you who are worrying that we might be abandoning our microphones, have no fear my friends, Pete and I remain committed phone operators. Only now, it will be DIGITAL VOICE. We’ll be squeezing our dulcet tones into a mere 800 Hz of bandwidth. This way we both sound exactly the same. Heck with this new technology everybody will sounds the same. How cool is that! We’ll all sound like a mix of Stephen Hawking’s synthesizer, Apple’s Siri, and MTV’s Max Headroom. The AM guys and the Enhanced SSB crew may need some time to get used to this, but c’mon fellas, it is time to get with it! There will be no more need to tweak all those menus for “presence” and “brightness” and “mid-range.” Heck no, we’ll all sound the same! Progress my friends, PROGRESS!
As I said, I had my doubts about this. But over the weekend I walked into the TV room and Elisa happened to be watching one of those “inspirational self-help” speakers on Direct TV, and you know what? He made a lot of sense. Change IS good! We have to EMBRACE the future! Impossible = “I’m possible!” Yea! So thank you Deepak Chopra! Thank you Pete Juliano! And welcome — all of you — to the WireWrapRap!

N7SUR’s Phasing Receiver on an Oregon Pine Board

And here I thought I was the only one. Apparently not. Bob LeDoux has also built a phasing receiver using a piece of wood as a base. I note also that phasing guru Rick Campbell KK7B built his Classic 40 DC receiver into a solid oak wrap-around case. Bob’s receiver is very interesting. That Tayloe Detector is very nice. Phasing is fun! As I type I am listening to Lou, EA3JE on 40 SSB with my phasing receiver.

Bill,

 I thought I’d share my breadboard system for receiver experiments. In this example I have a phasing, single sideband Tayloe receiver. The entire receiver, less VFO, pulls 54 milliamps at 5 volts.

The chassis is a prime piece of Oregon pine. Be forwarned; my Tayloe receiver doesn’t employ a single discrete transistor.

The DDS VFO at the top is the K5BCQ Si570 based RF generator kit. It reads 56.231 Mhz because the VFO operates at four times the receive frequency on a Tayloe detector.

The receiver consists of five boards. From left to right they are, RF front end filter; Tayloe detector and post detector amps; sideband eliminating phasing filter; eight pole low pass filter; high pass filter and audio amps.

Flexibility is key. Each stage, or set of stages is laid out on one circuit board which is tacked to the breadboard. Controls and jacks are mounted in scrap circuit board and screwed to the side of the breadboard.

Two parallel lengths of thin circuit board are used for the power and ground strips. Electrolytic caps are placed at each board power point. A bit of copper desoldering braid makes the connection between board ground plane and ground strip.

The circuit board is often double sided with the back side used as a ground plane. Holes are only drilled when a ground connection is needed.

Connections between boards are made using .025 diameter header pins soldered to pads. Wire wrap wire is used for connections between the header pins. These pins also make good test points. With SMT construction my intra-board signal lines rarely exceed half an inch. This eliminates coax cable for many connections.

I like to use eight pin op amps for my designs. These provide two stages and four poles in each package. I have a standard board layout. Using this single board, component selection allows low pass, high pass, band pass, gain, or no gain configurations. Multiple linked boards can be etched at one time and cut apart to meet individual circuit requirements.

Let me give credit to Dan Tayloe who developed the original receiver design in the NORCAL NC2030 CW transceiver. I also thank Pete Juliano, N6QW and Nick Kennedy, WA5BDU, for help with current design issues.

Bob–N7SUR–

A Good Radio Morning at N2CQR

The Radio Gods were smiling upon me this morning. I started out on 17 meters and had three nice contacts with European stations: OH5CZ, a young fellow near Helsinki; HB8DQL; then RM2D in Moscow. FB.

Then Pete showed up on the Skype. As he has said on his blog, he is still struggling with a family medical emergency, but I am happy to report that he is coping well, making good use of his can-do project manager background and his good sense of humor. It was great to see him.

Inspired by my talk with Pete, with 40 meter AM playing in the background, I turned to my R2 FRANKENSTEIN phasing receiver. Last night I completed the 90 degree phase shift network. This is built around two quad op-amp chips and is designed to take the audio output from the two DC receivers and create a 90 degree phase difference between them. I tested this stage by sending the same audio into each set of op amps. I then put one scope probe in the output of one chain of op amps, and the other probe on the output on the other chain. Wow. Bingo. 90 degrees of phase shift across the 300 — 3000 Hz audio spectrum.

Emboldened by this positive result, I put the completed stages together this morning. They passed the smoke test. Then I tuned to 40 meters. Wow again! As promised, opposite sideband rejection without resort to crystal filters. But as luck would have it, I ended up with a configuration that suppressed the Lower Sideband. For 40 meters, obviously I needed to suppress the other side of zero beat. But all I had to do to remedy this was to reach into the DDS box and switch the I and Q jumpers on the M0XPD/Kanga UK Arduino AD9850 shield. This switch put me on LSB. Very cool.

Here is a view from above:

The AD9850/Arduino DDS box is in the bottom center. Above that, near the center of the picture, is the board (from N6QW) with the two SBL-1 mixers and the initial AF amp stages. The small green board above that is the IC phase shift network. At the top of the picture you see the 3000 Hz low pass filter. Below that, the board with the little blue pot has an IC AF amplifier and a 300 HZ high pass filter.

I still have to build the audio amplifiers prescribed by the designer, Rick Campbell KK7B. But obviously I am already having a lot of fun with phasing. Here is the QST article on Rick Campbell’s R2 receiver:
https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/9301032.pdf

N6ORS’s Min-X Crosses the Pond on First Contact

Very cool! Reports on new phone rigs keep coming in. It is great to see them in their “still out on the bench” condition. And reports of the first contacts are always exciting. I like the MIN-X name. This is indeed another testament to the contributions made to the radio art by our friend Farhan.
Hello Bill,

Well I just finished tweaking my new rig, I named it Min-X because I outright stole bits and piecesof the BITX and the Minima, thanks Ashhar. I made my first contact today and what a contact!
The contact was made with the rig as shown. The amp is a home brew FET push-pull.
I had a chat with Beth MW0VOW in South Wales! From Wisconsin to Wales on 15w PEP.
Oh, most of the rig was ‘noodled’ and constructed while enjoying you and Pete on the
SolderSmoke podcast.

Best 73,
Keith N6ORS

ZL2CTM’s New Zealand Double Sideband Success

New Zealand and Australia seem to produce an amazingly high percentage of the world’s double sideband transceivers. Charlie ZL2CTM adds to the count. He took inspiration and circuitry from DSB hams in both countries and produced this beautiful DSB transceiver. It is obviously — as Charlie notes — chock full of soul. I definitely identify with his comment about “taming some kind of electro-mechanical machine” and also, of course, with his remark about the feelings that come with putting a homebrew rig on the air. So follow the advice of Charlie! Build a DSB rig and put it on the air! Make this your ham radio resolution for 2016! Give it a go!


Hi Bill:
I have been following you and Pete Juliano for many years now, and thought I would send you a photo of my 40m homebrew rig that I finished yesterday. Hopefully, it will help encourage others to melt some solder and make their own rigs. The rig is based on ideas and designs from Eric Sears ZL2BMI, Peter Parker Vk3YE and of course Pete N6QW. The aim is to make the final version relatively compact so I can take it tramping/hiking here in New Zealand.
The VFO is an AD9850 being controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini. The output is amplified to provide sufficient drive for the balanced modulator. I was using a nice 1” OLED screen to show the frequency, but that generated a huge amount of noise, so I changed to a LCD. Changing frequency is simply a matter of moving the curser left and right then using the up and down buttons to change the number. Very quick and easy. I was contemplating a rotary encoder, but I find those always seem to skip and jump every now and then. Must be the way I use them…
The balanced modulator is a 4148 diode ring. I do have some SBL-1s lying around, but I thought I’d go with the discrete diode ring for something different. I’m using a standard electret mic and a simple single stage amp. The switch above that switches between phone and CW.
The PA is two stages; the first a 2N3053 and the second a BD139. At this stage it puts out just over 1W into a 50ohm load. I might look to add another stage and get that up to 3-5W.
The audio amp is a simple LM386. I am not running it hard out as per the datasheet as it generates quite a bit of high frequency hiss in that configuration.
Unlike Pete, I don’t have access to a milling machine to make squares to mount the components on. Instead, I use vero/strip board upside down and solder directly to the strips. This works really well for me on HF. I cut tracks with the twist of a small drill bit.
Last night I made two contacts with the rig. The farthest was 527km according to some well known mapping software. Both reports said the audio was ‘very nice’, which was great to hear. The receiver worked surprisingly well too, and I managed to hear stations in Europe.
As for user controls, you will notice that the pots, switches and plugs are all over the place. I did that to keep leads short. I like it as i feel like I am taming some kind of electro-mechanical machine to generate and receive RF.
Anyway, this little rig has a ton of soul in it and is really fun to use. There is something different about making a contact with a rig you built. I really encourage everyone to give it a go!
The next iteration will be a SDR using a Teensy. Rheslip over at Open Emitter has done some great work with that.
73s
Charlie
ZL2CTM

Happy New Year! Straight Key Night on 160 Meters

A while back, when I first mentioned getting on 160 meters by year’s end, Pete suggested I shoot for Straight Key Night. As many of you know, suggestions from Pete somehow seem to have a way of becoming ham radio MORAL IMPERATIVES. He seems to be a prophet of sorts, a prophet of THE RADIO GODS. So following the guidance of the oracle of Newbury Park, I found myself in front of my DX-100/HQ-100 on New Year’s Eve, on 160 meter CW for the first time in my 42 years as a radio amateur.
It was great. A couple hours prior to the official 0000Z start of Straight Key Night I had my first 160CW QSO. It was with John WA2MUA up in Summit, NY. John’s QRZ page includes this: “Years ago–as a teenager– in an attempt to get enough wire for 160 I wrapped a quarter wave of wire around a pvc pipe, strapped it to a wooden gutter—-burned a large notch in the gutter and could have burned my parents’ house down!” That, my friends, is 160 meter KNACK!

Then, just minutes after SKN kick-off, I worked John W3LR in Eastern Pennsylvania. It was also John’s first SKN contact.

Next up was Eric NO3M. Wow, this one was amazing. Eric was running the homebrew rig pictured above. On his blog Eric describes the rig: “The transmitter is running a 89 Clapp oscillator, 802 buffer, 811 final… Output power is approximately 75W. “
Eric’s antenna is even more amazing: it is a 160 meter four square featuring FOUR aluminum tubing vertical elements with capacity hats and –GET THIS — a radial field consisting of 22,000 feet of bare copper wire. TWENTY TWO THOUSAND FEET OF BARE COPPER WIRE. Wow, you just don’t run into stations like that on 20 meter sideband. Eric’s blog: http://no3m.net/ But Eric — a Vibroplex Champion? On SKN?
I then worked KC2LSD and K1EEE. FB!

My last contact of the evening (and the year) was K1WHS, Dave in Maine. On his QRZ.com page, Dave reports:
“On 160 meters, I have a small setup right at my house. I use a K3 with a homebrew 3-1000 amplifier that runs at 1300 watts. The antenna is an 80 ft Rohn 25 in my backyard with some top loading and shunt feeding. I laid out a bunch of radials in an effort to get the efficiency up. At last count I had about 107 1/4 wave radials strung out. 160 is the only band where my feedline is not big fat hardline. I use a run of RG-213. For receive, I have several beverages running in the woods. I use this setup often in the winter as many times, the hilltop shack is not accessible due to heavy snow. I have nothing up for any of the bands between 160 and 10 meters”.
Thanks to all of my SKN contacts! And Happy New Year to all SolderSmoke readers and listeners!