{"id":7185,"date":"2015-11-13T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T23:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/11\/13\/waco-mighty-mite-mojo\/"},"modified":"2015-11-13T10:06:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T23:06:00","slug":"waco-mighty-mite-mojo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/11\/13\/waco-mighty-mite-mojo\/","title":{"rendered":"Waco Mighty Mite Mojo!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yq2M1ryMkII?rel=0\" width=\"440\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2780\"> <strong><em>Eric: Wow, great news from Waco. JOO indeed! And I really liked the WAY you did it, liberating crystals and wire from old TVs. That definitely adds mojo to the Waco M^3. Bill<\/em><\/strong> <\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2779\"> <strong><\/strong> <\/div>\n<p> <strong>H<\/strong><strong>ello Bill,<\/strong> <\/p>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2065\"> <strong> My name is Eric Melling KD0OXY. I have, as of tonight, officially passed selection for the CLA. My Michigan Mighty Mite began oscillating tonight between 1830 and 1900 CST and I am ecstatic about it! My foray into home brewing began mid-2011 when I obtained my general class ham license (I took Technician and General at the same time taking advice from my late grandfather). The first radio I ever purchased was the Pixie II kit and boy was that frustrating. I meticulously assembled the kit and worked very hard to stuff the transceiver, volume control, options to use the on-board key or a straight key, and maybe an on-board speaker or phones. But, to my chagrin, I was treated to the sweet wafting smell of the magic smoke long before ever getting on the air. I eventually did get on the air with my aforementioned grandfather&#8217;s VHF\/UHF HT and until recently, this has been the extent of my Ham career.<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2066\"> <strong><\/strong> <\/div>\n<div> <strong> But on the advent of my starting an MA in applied linguistics at a school in Dallas (hour and a half from home in Waco) and the rekindling of my electronics knack occurring near- simultaneously with my discovery of the SolderSmoke Podcast, I decided to give it another go. First, I got the old pixie kit to oscillate and then ripped it apart for parts to another project (non-radio). Then I procured a second Pixie kit from ebay and built that. It oscillated right away! Still no contacts; my CW is&#8230; improving.<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2108\"> <strong><\/strong> <\/div>\n<div> <strong> All this to say that I still had an itch that wanted scratching Enter: The Color Burst Liberation Army! Not only could I truly build something from scratch, I could follow my true calling and de oppresso liber some crystal. So I pulled some 30 (or so) gauge magnet wire from an old CRT. I had wound and rewound my coil three times (and unfortunately, the third one looks the worst) for 80m then 20m (far fewer turns) and back to 80m with N&#8217;JOO (No Joy of Oscillation) in any configuration. I am using a polyvaricon pulled form an old AM\/FM transistor radio, the Mitsumi PVC-2FX which has 82 pF, 140 pF, 20 and 40 pF sections which I have wired in parallel giving me ~0-282 pF of range? And finally, I was using a MPS A42 NPN transistor. I had to run some resistors in parallel and some caps in series to get the right values, but I eventually got it all together and looking pretty smart on a 1&#8243; x 1.5&#8243; piece of perf board. Alas! Nothing!<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2069\"> <strong><\/strong> <\/div>\n<div> <strong> I was poking around at the circuit and realized that when I keyed the transmitter, the coil would get really hot right at the tap. I still don&#8217;t know why that was, but I figured it was a good sign as it meant something was happening. I also was getting plenty of pops and clicks on the receiver. Anyway, to make a short story long, I decided that the dark mark under the transistor was a bad sign, found an NTE 123 and plugged it in instead. And oh what a wonderful day to hear the first warblings of my very first all scratch built transmitter hitting the airwaves! And here is the video: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/yq2M1ryMkII\" id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2071\" rel=\"noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>https:\/\/youtu.be\/yq2M1ryMkII<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2072\"> <strong> <\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2073\"> <strong> Probably more than you wanted to hear, but there it is. I do plan to build an SSB transceiver someday (hoping sooner than later). I feel you and Pete and your podcast have really set me out on the right foot! I hope to HB2HB with you soon!<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2074\"> <strong><br \/><\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2075\"> <strong> Sincerely,<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1447407872268_2076\"> <strong> Eric KD0OXY<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric: Wow, great news from Waco. JOO indeed! And I really liked the WAY you did it, liberating crystals and wire from old TVs. That definitely adds mojo to the Waco M^3. Bill Hello Bill, My name is Eric Melling KD0OXY. I have, as of tonight, officially passed selection for the CLA. My Michigan Mighty &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/11\/13\/waco-mighty-mite-mojo\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Waco Mighty Mite Mojo!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knack-stories","category-michigan-mighty-mite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7185","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=7185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}