{"id":8657,"date":"2013-05-28T09:29:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2013\/05\/28\/peter-parkers-knobless-wonder-minimalist-ssb-rig\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T01:04:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T15:04:30","slug":"peter-parkers-knobless-wonder-minimalist-ssb-rig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2013\/05\/28\/peter-parkers-knobless-wonder-minimalist-ssb-rig\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Parker’s Knobless Wonder Minimalist SSB Rig"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a> <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Oh man, Peter Parker has done it again! As he did with the Beach 40, he has come up with a circuit that will attract a lot of attention. It is a single frequency SSB transceiver with no knobs (or windows, or menus!) <\/strong>
<\/strong>
Peter Marks recently had breakfast in Melbourne with VK3YE: <\/strong>
http:\/\/blog.marxy.org\/2013\/05\/melbourne-meetup-with-homebrew-legend.html<\/strong><\/a>
There are some great pictures of the new rig, and the Beach 40. <\/strong>
<\/strong>
Here’s the message from VK3YE (to the Minimalist Radio Group) that may <\/strong>
someday be seen as the start of the Knobless Revolution: <\/strong>
<\/strong>
Some might reckon that SSB is inevitably too complex to be in the minimalist
class, but I beg to disagree.<\/p>\n

I reckon you could build a whole SSB transceiver in 2 days of solid work. I
took a day to build what will be described below up to the stage where it <\/strong><\/em>
was receiving & producing a low level SSB on Tx.<\/p>\n

Take this recipe:<\/p>\n

1. Build the back end of the BitX <\/strong><\/em>http:\/\/www.phonestack.com\/farhan\/bitx.html<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
That is everything to the right of (and including) the Q2 & Q12 stages.<\/p>\n

2. Use cheaply available 7.159 MHz crystals in the crystal filter and
carrier oscillator. Keep filter capacitor values the same. Remove L3 in the
carrier oscillator circuit. Use a slightly bigger trimmer in the carrier
oscillator (say up to 50 pF) and wire in series with crystal. Align trimmer
so carrier freq is 7160 kHz.<\/p>\n

3. Build a power amplifier stage \/ relay \/ LPF as per the Beach 40. Just
the last 2 stages (using BD139s) should be enough. Output maybe 2w.<\/p>\n

The result is a 10 transistor \/ 1 IC SSB transceiver on 7160 kHz. It’s
crystal controlled but at least during the day 2 watts to a good antenna
should be enough for people to hear and reply to your CQ calls up to 800 –
1000 km away. Of course you could go a bit more minimalist and remove the
LM386, substituting 1 transistor instead (as per the original Beach 40)
which is what I did.<\/p>\n

The main thing that’s odd is it has no knobs – no tuning, RIT, volume, RF
gain etc. Just sockets – for mic, phones, antenna and power to feed it what
it needs (Rx RF, Tx audio, DC power) and give what you want (Rx audio and Tx
RF).<\/p>\n

It is philosophically different to using any other transceiver. You either
accept what the radio dishes up (frequency, AF gain, mic gain etc) or you
don’t. On or off – there is no other state. Take it or leave it. Like a
cat this is a radio that lives on its own terms.<\/p>\n

Those used to fiddling with adjustments will find the ‘knobless wonder’
transceiver causes them to be at a loose end. Those so afflicted will smoke
more, bite their nails more or eat junk food more. Sometimes elegant
simplicity in radio can be a health hazard – maybe knobless rigs should
carry health warnings.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, and in my view this outweighs the above, there is the
aesthetic satisfaction that comes from using a rig that cannot be made any
simpler. Especially if it’s a mode, like SSB, that’s widely thought
constructionally complex. Plus it takes little in return – the power
consumption will be a fraction of what a commercial rig will demand.<\/p>\n

73, Peter VK3YE<\/strong><\/em>
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a> Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a> Our Book Store: http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh man, Peter Parker has done it again! As he did with the Beach 40, he has come up with a circuit that will attract a lot of attention. It is a single frequency SSB transceiver with no knobs (or windows, or menus!) Peter Marks recently had breakfast in Melbourne with VK3YE: http:\/\/blog.marxy.org\/2013\/05\/melbourne-meetup-with-homebrew-legend.html There are … Continue reading “Peter Parker’s Knobless Wonder Minimalist SSB Rig”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,28,66,68,85,36,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-bitx20","category-farhan","category-india","category-minimalist-radio","category-parker-peter","category-ssb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657","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=8657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8660,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657\/revisions\/8660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}