{"id":3310,"date":"2018-12-29T19:22:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T08:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2018\/12\/29\/kc1fszs-peppermint-iii-homebrew-bitx-with-mods\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T14:56:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T04:56:00","slug":"kc1fszs-peppermint-iii-homebrew-bitx-with-mods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2018\/12\/29\/kc1fszs-peppermint-iii-homebrew-bitx-with-mods\/","title":{"rendered":"KC1FSZ’s Peppermint III Homebrew BITX with Mods"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi Guys:<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n

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I had some time over the holiday to finish off my second scratch-built rig. I am very thankful that I got the work done on these projects before I read Pete’s “Don’t Build It” diatribe. That would have been very demoralizing. \ud83d\ude42<\/o:p><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n

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Scratch build #2 (called Peppermint III) is still fundamentally BITX although I’ve made changes this time around. I’ve switched to ADE-1 mixers with LO ports driven by adjustable gain buffers (ala N6QW LBS). I’ve noticed that performance can be improved a lot if you can buffer\/tweak the LO levels of the VFO and BFO (particularly carrier suppression on TX). I did W7ZOI TIAs in the IF chain. I’ve also taken the shielding\/layout of the finals more seriously and have been able to dial up the power a lot <\/span>(I did the KB1GMX thing with cutting off the drain pin on the IRF510 and using the tab). <\/span> The software is also greatly improved and now supports LSB\/USB modes as well as software-driven PTT control for RTTY\/FT8 and the hooks for my poor man’s panadaptor. I’ve been working lots of stations on QRO.<\/o:p><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n

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Total build time was about three months (half the time of #1) and the layout came out much smaller than before. I made a trip over to Williams\/Sonoma after Christmas and picked up the 2018 edition of the Peppermint Bark candy tin on discount and I think I can make it all fit. More to follow …<\/o:p><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n

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Happy New Year and 73s,<\/o:p><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n


<\/b><\/span> Bruce KC1FSZ<\/span><\/b>

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Hi Guys: I had some time over the holiday to finish off my second scratch-built rig. I am very thankful that I got the work done on these projects before I read Pete’s “Don’t Build It” diatribe. That would have been very demoralizing. \ud83d\ude42 Scratch build #2 (called Peppermint III) is still fundamentally BITX although … Continue reading “KC1FSZ’s Peppermint III Homebrew BITX with Mods”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[297,28,60,41,197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bitx","category-bitx20","category-hayward-wes","category-juliano-pete","category-parent-allison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3313,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions\/3313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}