Category: Switzerland

F6GUH: True Homebrew

Philippe put it this way: “Radio is my religion, my shack is my church.”

20 Meter transceiver
40 Meter Transceiver
80 meter transceiver
Today I was on 17 meter SSB, talking to Yannick HB9TWY. He looked at my QRZ page and said that he had a friend with rigs that look like mine. “Who is that?” I asked. Philippe F6GUH is the intrepid homebrewer. I like the looks of his rigs. And they are truly “rigs.”

Thanks Yannick. And thank you Philippe.

A New Distance Record with an ESP-32 Module? Sort of. A cool video from HB9BLA.

It was nice to watch a video from Andreas again. And to be reminded of the presence in geostationary orbit of QO-100. Really sad that we STILL have no equivalent over the United States.

Andreas engages in a lot of the kind of digital wizardy that I have learned (because of my own shortcomings) to stay away from. Still, this is a very interesting experiment, with lots of focus on antenna gain and path loss at UHF. I plan on again listening to QO-100 via the website. Thank you Andreas!

Ferdy HB9DSP’s 5 band Moxon — The Moxhorn!

Click on the image for a clearer view
Wow, I couldn’t even build a 2 band Moxon, but Ferdy has built a 5 band version. He told me that he had to tweak the elements a lot to get acceptable SWR’s on all the bands. 20 and 17 are especially tough, because they are so close in frequency.

More info on his great QRZ page: https://www.qrz.com/db/HB9DSP

Thanks Ferdy!

Andreas HB9BLA’s Ideas on Building a Lab or Workshop

Lots of great ideas on workshop or lab design from Andreas, the guy with the Swiss accent. Andreas is HB9BLA. I liked all of this, especially his idea on books.

A while back Andreas was interviewed by Eric Guth on QSO today: https://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/hb9bla

Thank you Andreas!

Andreas Spiess (The Guy with Swiss Accent) — Workshop Tips

Thanks to Paul Taylor VK3HN for alerting me to the YouTube channel of Andreas Spiess. There are lots of great projects there, including several videos on building an Oscar 100 ground station.

In the video above, Andreas talks about his lab/workshop. He is more focused on digital projects than I am, but I found many of his tips applicable to the analog world. And of course the more digitally oriented readers will find Andreas’s observations especially useful.

I was sold on this video when Andreas reached to his book shelf and showed us Tracey Kidder’s “Soul of the New Machine.” That is the book that brought the word “soul” into the SolderSmoke lexicon.

There are many great videos on Andreas’s channel. I found his Playlists page to be a good way to see the many different catergories of his projects:

https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasSpiess/playlists

 Thanks Andreas.