{"id":10314,"date":"2015-01-02T16:02:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T05:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/a-thatched-roof-some-palm-trees-a-dipole-and-a-homebrew-rig\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T04:13:34","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:13:34","slug":"a-thatched-roof-some-palm-trees-a-dipole-and-a-homebrew-rig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/a-thatched-roof-some-palm-trees-a-dipole-and-a-homebrew-rig\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thatched Roof, Some Palm Trees, A Dipole, and a Homebrew Rig"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/b> Look at the drawing above. That is the banner logo of Rod Newkirk’s column in QST magazine. For many years Rod regaled us with exciting reports on the activities of intrepid foreign radio amateurs, transmitting from exotic locations using ingeniously devised homebrew radio equipment. Look at the picture on the left side. See the palm trees? See the thatched roof shack with the dipole antenna? Well, that’s pretty close to what it was like for me out on the Samana Peninsula in the Dominican Republic last month. <\/b>

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I set up the station under the thatched roof in this picture:<\/b><\/div>\n

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The red pins mark the spot:<\/b><\/div>\n
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Here I am, tuning the rig while looking across Bahia Rincon: <\/b><\/div>\n
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The rig was my Azores-built, oft-modified, NE602-based, ceramic resonator DSB transceiver with a recently added India-designed BITX IRF510 RF amplifier chain. A little article I wrote about the ceramic resonator VXO was featured in SPRAT 127. My antenna was a half wave dipole strung up in the thatched roof. Power came from 10 AA Batteries. So this was the Double A, Double Sideband, Dipole DX-pedition. <\/b>

<\/b> I had given some thought to building an SSB rig for this trip, but because of the efforts of Peter Parker, VK3YE, I felt compelled to take a DOUBLE Sideband rig with me to the beach. <\/b>

<\/b> Here is an old (2006) video on the rig. The power amplifier has been significantly modified: <\/b>

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