MAPA = Make America Poor Again! A Lame Duck is nothing more than a Left-Over Turkey!

No, we are not talking about some cutesy cottage with great food in a corner of New England (or maybe even Connecticut) but the B and B of Ham Radio. Finally, you guessed it: a Bitx4o and the Baofeng UV35. I suspect the newly minted Extras may have had to struggle with the B&B since those are not rigs on the memorization list. Up front I own one of each. The Bitx40 you see in the photo is no ordinary unit as it was gifted to me from friend N2CQR as a Tech Special. Bill often receives units like this (broken) and will occasionally pass some on to me. I think he does this with a twinkle in his eye... a chance to drive me nuts chasing down problem rigs. I say this is a special Bitx40 as I figured out how to add USB to an otherwise LSB only radio. Of course, USB on 40M has only one use and that is FT-8 (or to talk to the group that only uses USB on 40M).  The solution was not to supplant the BFO crystal with one of the opposite sideband frequencies but instead change the LO freq...

Where to find Nemo? I have no answer! And whether the head of DHS will be sacked or impeached. Same answer!  But if you want to build my MC1496 based Direct Conversion Receiver or the upscale 1496 SSB transceiver... then where to get quality MC1496 IC's. The answer is Jameco Electronics  for the leaded version, and the single unit price is $1.95. Mouser sells an SMD unit for $0.35. Funny how about 15 years ago I bought the same leaded IC from Jameco for $0.69 unit cost. I think I splurged and bought 20 for less than $15. Jameco also has the hard-to-find miniature ceramic trimmers we all love to use in homebrew band pass filters. Where to find Accountability The blame game is ongoing in our Nation's Capital. It will take on the proportions of the biblical times where St. Peter thrice declared I do not know this man. I guess it is easier to deny things once you move up the chain of command. This reminds me of an incident at Chu Lai, in 1965.  I had the OOD watch and about...

For those who astutely follow this blog you have likely noted that I have only built radios in the HF spectrum. Even then it has been typically 75-15 Meters. In an attempt to build a 10M radio, that got sidetracked when the XYL's (SK) health issues got significantly worse.  The two radios we are covering today are directly related and in fact the smaller of the two was an attempt to shrink down the first version. In 2011 I was on a quest to build a shirt pocket sized SSB transceiver. The 1st version you would need a very large pocket (2X3X5) and the second version was 2X2X4... closer to pocket size. So, referring to an earlier blog posting these two are the exact same radios only one was shoehorned into a smaller topology. 1st Version of the Shirt Pocket SSB Transceiver The band of choice was 20M and both rigs had a crystal switched VXO to give about 100 kHz on the active part of 20M. Version 1 after the disaster. Jointly they were the subject of an article in QRP Quarterly. [ For ...

[The posting on the Dentron HF Scout yesterday...There is one on eBay right now selling for $600. The seller thinks it is a linear amp and not a transceiver.] Real Hams can do like a friend did in the UK. He had a desire to operate 2M CW and that as a standalone functionality is simply not found as standard gear. There are many high-end radios that incidentally will do CW, but these are expensive and thus a hunt for an alternative. He went to his junk box and with a bit of noodling came up with a design using what he had in hand. It was built and works like a charm. He was able to do that because he invested the time to learn about circuitry, to learn the hardware and to learn the software. Thus, he was able to scratch build a rig to operate the mode he wanted and the band so desired. He is a real ham and those with a license should be able to do. In my designs I try hard to keep from building the same topology over and over putting it in a different enclosure and calling it a new rig...

If you were a licensed ham during the 1970's-90's, the name Dentron was synonymous with High Power Linear RF Amplifiers and Antenna Tuners. The company did try to produce a line of HF SSB Transceivers both for ham use and ones designated for the Civil Air Patrol. They were not too successful with the SSB products. Dentron as the story goes didn't really build the internal SSB hardware but were more of a repackage supplier and box builder. The Main Boards for the SSB transceivers were purchased from a Japanese supplier which employed a 9 MHz IF Topology. There is a precedent for this with CB radios. Many branded CBs all had the same internal boards.  Heathkit had the HW-18 which was a CAP SSB transceiver built using the HW monoband topology. Thus, Dentron would be a competitor. During a search of eBay, I found a Dentron HF Scout which was a multichannel crystal-controlled CAP SSB transceiver complete with a 100-watt brick. (It was toast). The radio was tuned to the 4 MHz CAP...

Just to be fair to the 99% of the hams who only operate or do contests,  I spent some time on 20M yesterday operating the Winter Field Day Contest. This is not sponsored by the ARRL. Starting 1st with my rig, I used a homebrewed Dual Filter 9 MHz IF rig with the 20X4 Juliano Blue LCD. The rig choice was a struggle since the other option was my totally homebrew 20M SDR transceiver as that would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Using a filter rig in my view was an opportunity to show off! For our new YL Extra Class Licensee's, this homebrew rig uses the "Drake Approach" where the BFO is set at 9 MHz and to achieve upper and lower sideband there are two Crystal Filters. The center frequency of one filter is designed so it will only pass the lower sideband. The other filter has the center frequency so that it will only pass upper sideband. Relay steering selects the proper Crystal Filter for the mode chosen (USB or LSB). At one time a surplus distributor in downtown Israel ...