Video of Colin’s First Contact with his Homebrew Scratch-built BITX20

I love this video. Colin finished his BITX a week or so ago and has been waiting for an opportunity to test it. Over the weekend he braved the winter of Northern England and, with his son, set up his new rig out in his snow-covered garden. Appropriately for a first contact with scratch-built rig, the circuitry was unencumbered by any kind of case or box. That’s the way it should be done! Well done Colin! You are well and truly a member of the International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards, and the diagnosis of “The Knack” has been confirmed (a severe case, it appears).

Hi Pete and Bill,

It’s been a lovely fine day here in West Yorkshire, so I took a table out into the garden and set up my BITX circuit on it. I set up my SOTA dipole on a 9m fishing pole.

I heard a strong German station calling CQ, so I gave him a call and hoped for the best!

How amazing to contact someone in another country using a rig and mic you’ve made yourself! Do I qualify as a REAL radio ham now? Do I have a confirmed case of the knack? 🙂

Although I may appear underwhelmed in the video, (besides the air punches!), I did really get a kick out of the QSO.
73 and huge thanks to both of you for the encouragement and support.

Colin, M1BUU

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

Brian’s Mighty Mite

Bill,
All the parts finally arrived from China so the MMM lives 🙂
Good to finally join the CBLA!!

It made for a very enjoyable Saturday afternoon while the snow fell!
I left some room between the antenna connector and the coil for the low pass filter I’m going to build if the caps ever arrive.

Thanks for the crystal and the inspiration to get busy and build something; it brought back a few childhood memories of building things for the homebrew contest at the local hamfest.

73,
Brian
KA0PHJ

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

SolderSmoke #171 DC RX in QQ, Power Supplies, Small Screens, 12 Buck Counters, HW8 Error?, KX3 RX

SolderSmoke Podcast #171 is available:

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke171.mp3

 Bench Report:
Pete’s Small Screens (in Color!)
Si5351s
Bill’s Graph Paper Frequency Readout
Bill’s Broadened Barebones Barbados RX. DIGITIZED!
Another AD9850 DDS using M0XPD Kanga UK Shield
New 13 dollar Color Display (Prettier than Graph paper!)

Pete and Ben’s Article in QRP Quarterly Available free here:
http://www.qrparci.org/qqsample/qqsample.pdf

 The DEEP SPIRITUAL REWARDS of DC Receivers
The Importance of Good Power Supplies
SPRAT Article on HW8 Design Error
Latest Edition of Hot Iron
Elecraft KX3 — Has one of the best receivers in the world

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

15% Off on SolderSmoke and other books at Lulu This Weekend

15% off all print books with code PRINTME

All three of my books are here:

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

More Glowing Numerals! BIG! BLUE! $13!

Even though my pencil and graph paper frequency readout for the BITX rigs has its own undeniable charm, this little device could get me to go digital. I heard about it from Chuck Adams and the folks on the qrp-tech mailing list. 13 dollars. It covers .1 MHz to 2.4 GHz. You just hook up a 9 volt source and the RF input. It also does IF offset. The construction looks great and it would be very easy to put into (or aside) any rig. Here is where I got mine:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/400732593471?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

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

Beagle 2 Found On Mars

I was one of the millions of people who woke up that Christmas morning in 2003 thinking not of Santa Claus but of Colin Pillinger’s Mars Lander, the Beagle 2. We were in London by then, and later on I got to meet Colin Pillinger. I still have the books about Beagle 2 that he gave to me. Wow, it looks like they came very close. Too bad Colin did not live to see these pictures.

The Planetary Society has a very good article on all this:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/01160800-beagle-2-found.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

Back Into the Digital Morass

Using a very nice M0XPD AD9860 shield from Kanga-UK and software by Richard AD7C I put together another little DDS VFO. This one went together without a lot of hair pulling. I put the LCD, brightness control and rotary controller on one piece of vero board — this will also serve as the front panel.

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

The Battery That’s Been Working for 175 Years


 In case you missed this. Makes you think, doesn’t it? I’m thinking of a QRPp QRSS transmitter that would just keep on going. Battery designed by Giuseppe Zamboni.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-battery-has-lasted-175-years-and-no-one-knows-how

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

New Analog Frequency Readout for BITX17 VXO

I’ve been getting tired of being in the dark about the frequency on which my BITX17 was operating. So I pulled out some graph paper, my frequency counter, and a pencil. You will see two frequencies at each point — that’s because I use two crystals, switched by the black knob on the left. I realize this paper and pencil approach is hopelessly out of date, but I see it as “appropriate technology” for a discrete component all-analog transceiver.

Pete set me straight on how to come up with the numbers: VXO frequency minus ACTUAL carrier oscillator/BFO freq. After doing this I took great delight in going on the air and asking guys with fancy “glowing numerals” rigs to compare their freq readout with my pencil and graph paper readouts: they were painfully close.

But I am not slipping completely into stubborn Luddite-ism; this weekend I worked on a DDS-based AD9850/Arduino VFO with I-Q output based on Paul M0XPD’s Kanga-UK Arduino Shield. STAY TUNED!

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

Jailed for The Knack: Gerry Wells, Homebrew Hero

Thanks to Thomas of the “SWLing Post” for alerting us to the story of UK radio legend Gerry Wells. As Thomas said in his post, you really need to drop what you are doing and listen to this great BBC program about Gerry:

http://swling.com/blog/2011/02/radio-documentary-the-wireless-world-of-gerry-wells/

 The poor fellow was actually JAILED for his “radio obsession.” Wow. That was kind of harsh. But Gerry overcame adversity and had a very happy life in radio.

Thomas has more on Gerry here:

http://swling.com/blog/2014/12/jonathans-interviews-with-gerry-wells/

Thanks Thomas! And thanks to the BBC.

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

VE3MKC’s Teensy Si5351 SDR Receiver with a Tiny Color Screen (video)



From: Rich
To: “soldersmoke@yahoo.com”
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2015 9:22 AM
Subject: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project
Bill

First, thanks for Soldersmoke and all you do for us QRP hackers around the world. I’m a big fan!
I’ve detected you are getting sucked into the world of microcontrollers of late. I know you are not really that excited about SDR but this is a radio that combines Arduino, the currently popular SI5351 and a Softrock to make a very functional SDR. I started this project last year which uses the fabulous Teensy 3.1 and companion audio shield. I recently packaged it all up and it looks like a QRP radio now. Still doesn’t transmit but as I like to say thats “just a small matter of software”.
There are several posts about it on my blog. The most recent:
There’s a link to a video and a link to the code in that post.
Rock on Bill!
73, Rich Heslip
VE3MKC


Sent: Friday, January 23, 2015 4:09 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project

Wow Rich that is really beautiful. Amazing! I am also sending this to Pete Juliano, but I was at first hesitant about this because I feared that your combination of Si5351 and TFT display might be TOO exciting for him. Deep breaths Pete…
73 and Thanks, Bill


From: jessystems@verizon.net
To: soldersmoke@yahoo.com;
Subject: Re: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 06:03:40 -0800

Hi Rich & Bill,
Wow –really exciting project Rich! Congratulations and Bravo!
This is so exciting, for all hams, as this just shows the power of the available low cost technology that is now on the market. Your project is really tempting as I have a V6.2 15M softrock sitting in a box (somewhere). I was somewhat put off with the Power SDR as the opposite sideband rejection is not too good –it is clear you have cracked that nut.
Thanks for sharing Rich and yes Bill I am taking very deep breaths.
73’s
Pete N6QW

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

DuWayne’s AD9850 Arduino TFT SWR Scanner

This is really nice. DuWayne KQ4VB, has been talking to Pete about his use of digital chips, Arduinos and TFT displays in homebrew SWR analyzers. Obviously these techniques could be used to measure the passband of crystal filters. (Far superior to my pencil and paper procedures.) Nice work DuWayne!

Pete
Looks good, I did some playing with the TFT board I have. Did a board for the antenna analyzer using the TFT and a 9850 DDS module insted of the NOKIA and si5351. Wanted to see if there was much difference between a sine wave out and the square wave from the 5351. Appears to be very nearly the same from a couple of quick tests I have done. Want to try some different diodes and change some values for amplifier gain.
Will keep you informed. DuWayne

Earlier… (4 November 2014)

Pete
Really enjoy listening to you on Solder-Smoke. Saw the link to your
xcvr with the Adafruit si5351 board. I got a couple of them and have
been playing with code for them. Have been spending most of my time
working on an antenna analyzer based on the one by K6BEZ. Pleased to see
your article in the latest QQ. I have used basically the same circuit,
except am using the little NOKIA LCD display. The resolution is not the
greatest but works well for this application. I am using some of the
original code from K6BEZ to talk with his existing PC program. For
stand alone I have 2 modes, a straight tune mode where I can select the
frequency and read the SWR. Also implementing a sweep mode that scans
the whole band and after it is finished you can tune across and see the
frequency and SWR. I am attaching a couple of pictures of what I have
so far. Waiting on the correct op amp to arrive and making some changes
to the amp gain to get better results on the higher band where the
output of the DDS drops off.
Thanks for all the inspiration you give to us home builders and tinkerers
out here.
73 DuWayne KV4QB

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

Interesting Propagation Web Site

CONUS HF BAND CONDX
1/22/15 — 10:45:00 GMT — REPORT # 1289
160 80 40 30 20 15 10

I think this is a really interesting and useful way to gather and present information on propagation conditions. Check it out. The “instructions” page gives some background info on the technique used.

http://www.bandconditions.com/

The author, Biz, K5BIZ seems like a very FB ham: http://www.qrz.com/db/K5BIZ

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

Star City Antique Radio’s Beautiful Workshop

Dale Cook of Star City Antique Radios and Test Gear has a really nice site with great pictures of his workbenches and test gear. Inspirational stuff. Take a look:

http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/pages/compact.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

All of the Shortwave Spectrum LIVE on Web Waterfall Display

It’s been a while since I checked in with this site. They have made a lot of improvements. It is very impressive. I had trouble with it using Internet Explorer, but it worked right away using the Google Chrome browser. Play with it a bit. Zoom in on 40 meters. Listen to the LSB contacts. Very nice.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

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

When Your Local Oscillator Could Sink Your Ship!

Thomas KK6AHT is the intrepid radio amateur from France who moved to California and successfully built a Minima as his first homebrew project. Yesterday we got additional evidence that Thomas definitely has THE KNACK. It seems that he has been looking through really old radio magazines (clearly a symptom). He sent us this add from 1942. Yikes! Imagine getting your ship sunk because your Local Oscillator is not quite local enough!

…………………

Hey!
I thought you would get a kick out of this 1942 ad. Sounds like those guys had a some good reasons to fight QRM … Who knew the important role played by the FCC during the war?
Now tell me: why were the receivers so noisy at the beginning of the war? What did they change? Happy new year to you both! May the gods of radio (and digital) bring you much fun on the air.
73, Thomas

…………………………

Hi Thomas,
Well Thomas, I will dip my toe into some very deep water and attempt an answer for you which also is an important clue about QRP operations.
  1. Today we have many many signals co-existing in the radio spectrum. During the war there was much less radio garbage and the military lit up the ether with transmissions very sparingly. But that is on the transmit side. That said the local oscillators (much like you have with the Si-570 on your Minima) used in receivers also produce RF that unless is minimized in some fashion is passed right through to the antenna and can be detected. Regenerative receivers are especially prone to this. Yes some military equipment used regenerative receivers. In fact the famous Paraset had to be constantly moved so it would not be detected.
  2. This receiver generated RF into the antenna was addressed by companies like Scott by shielding everything. That receiver in the photo probably weighed about a 100 pounds or more. Much attention was paid to RF bypassing and grounding. The cheap table top radios were RF generators par excellence.
  3. There was another approach developed in WWII to solve that problem and forms the basis of what makes work that little device sitting in your pocket. The odd part it was invented by a famous movie star. Look up Heddy Lamar in wikipedia. She and a co-inventor came up with the concept of frequency hopping and spread spectrum technology. By jumping frequencies it would be hard to pinpoint a transmitting station. That concept forms the backbone of our cellphone system
  4. Now the QRP part – if the RF output from a receiver local oscillator (milliwatts) can be detected from afar – then it follows QRP works!
Have fun.

Pete


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

Digitizing the Barebones Superhet

I did this for Pete. And I did it to start out the new year with something different. And because I needed the crystal for my beloved BITX and didn’t want to buy more crystals.

After successfully broadening the filter in my Barebones Barbados Superhet (originally built by Dale Parfiit W4OP) I decided to replace the VXO with an outboard Arduino/DDS device. Nothing new in that (I was playing with this back in October), but in what I think is a symbolically significant twist, I pulled out the tuning cap for the VXO and, in the hole left by the tuning control, replaced the knob with a BNC connector. That connector now carries DDS signals into the receiver. The crystal was at around 23.125 MHz — that’s why the LCD display is showing 23 MHz.

It works great. I was listening to the DX station in Iran this morning.

Here is a video of the October 2014 experiments:


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Colin Finishes His BITX

Wow, that is one beautiful BITX. Nicely done Colin. But I must say that you are exhibiting an almost inhuman degree of patience! Who needs a case? Fire that thing up and make the traditional “still-on-the-workbench” initial contact.
Hi Guys,

I loved the last SolderSmoke, it was another great episode. It really does amaze me, that a few years ago, hams were saying that it was too difficult to build your own gear that would be anywhere near to the commercial stuff, but here we are with Arduinos etc bringing powerful functionality to the masses. I couldn’t have imagined building an SSB rig with a pretty and functional LCD screen when I started in ham radio.

Bill, first regens, now SDRs? Amazing! I exchanged a few words with George Dobbs about your change of heart towards regenerative receivers, he seemed genuinely pleased. 🙂

Pete, your Si5351 work with the pretty displays is cool, I can see me getting pretty hooked! I have the Si5351 board, Paul M0XPD advised me to buy it. I’d love to build another SSB rig in a smaller box for regular SOTA activating. I must look into the pretty little displays and have a play with the Si5351. I notice that Hans Summers has now put out a cheap Si5351 based kit, handy for us guys in Eu. http://www.hanssummers.com/synth.html

I finished building my BITX board yesterday but wanted to have a sleep before applying power! Today I carefully checked the circuit for errors and found none, phew! I fired the rig up gently, watching the current carefully. I wound up the TX bias to 50mA as stated in the MKARS80 instructions, all went well. I plugged in the mic and spoke – BANG! – Everything went off. Oops – I had used a 500mA fuse for initial safety and forgot to swap it for the bigger one! I fitted a 1.6A fuse and hey presto, all was fine. I was absolutely amazed and to be honest, rather proud of myself. I think the TX is a little bit too hot, my meter is showing about 6W on voice peaks- eek! The rig seems to be perfectly behaved though, no wierd effects seem to be happening. I can just turn the bias down a bit, right?

Anyway, I was happy with my progress so I finished for the day. I still need to investigate and probably tweak the carrier suppression.

I spent a short while talking into a dummy load, using my FT817 to monitor the transmission. My 2yr old son was interested in my voice coming out of the 817’sspeaker!

Thanks for all the guidance and help along the way, I’m elated that I’ve built a voice rig that works! I’ve attached a pic of my finished board, I only just squeezed the circuit on, but isn’t she pretty? 🙂

Can’t wait to get the rig built into it’s case and score that first QSO.
73, Colin, M1BUU

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

Kansas Mighty Mite

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Pete’s Beautiful Tiny Color Display

Oh man, this is the kind of thing that lures me ever deeper into the digital morass. That would be hard to do with my beloved discrete analog circuits! Be sure to note the size (it is sitting on the top from a pill bottle — you can also look at the pen for a size reference). It is 1.25 inches by 1.25 inches. Pete has it working with the Si5351 software. As you can see there is still room at the bottom of the display. Pete notes that an SWR readout is possible. And Pete got this device for FIVE BUCKS!

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