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2018 ~ The Year of SSB Transceivers

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Why Build Another Transceiver?10/16/2018 ~ See the latest Video on the Heathkit SSB Transceiver
10/10/2018 ~ Breaking the Guinness Book of Records.1014/2018 ~ The Heathkit Rig is on the Air

Running 100 MW with just the Driver Stage the Heathkit Rig is doing WSPR. Just installed a Refined Driver Stage with the 2N2219 -- a healthy 100 MW. The Transistor with the heatsink in the lower left corner is the 2N2219






This is the WSPR Data at 100 MW


Get off the couch and start soldering!
73's Pete N6QW


The SMD board above is the Plessey Bilateral Amplifier in surface mount. This is the work of Nick, G8INE who recently acquired a CNC machine. You can see the small size as compared to the ADE-1 DBM. Nick has done a superb job --and he reports it has been proofed and is a working board!

If you go to my website www.n6qw.com under the Sudden Transceiver link there is a link to G8INE and he has offered to provide the Gerber files for this really small board. Thanks Nick!

Pete N6QW

What are you thinking --…
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2018 ~ The Year of SSB Transceivers

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Using the Digital Modes WSPR & FT89-11-2018
Some nice spots into Africa and South America. Am using a new site for displaying information. This site also has analytics about your spots. Thanks Phil, VK7JJ.

http://wspr.vk7jj.com/


73's
Pete N6QW



This is about 15 minutes this morning, 7 AM PDST, running 10 watts on 40 Meters and a droopy dipole. You can see the paths favor NE SW and are pretty consistent even running 5 watts. Some of those paths are in excess of 12000 KM.
The secret is the newly designed and scratch built digital interface that can turn any SSB, USB capable transceiver into a digital workhorse. Unless you modify the Bitx40 it will not work without modification to USB. Most of my rigs are homebrewed by me and thus are USB capable.


I modified a sound card interface board from KF5INZ (eBay) which used a Serial Port for communication with my computer so now the lash up works on USB. The computer is a small form factor Windows 10 Intel NUC that is about the size of a CD case…
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2018 ~ The Year of SSB Transceivers

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FT8 & WSPR on your Homebrew Rig!For several months now I have been working on a new SSB rig that will be the subject of a couple of articles in  future issues of the GQRP Club publication SPRAT Magazine.

Run don't walk if you are not already a member of the GQRP Club so by joining you can gain access to the articles. Most of my operation is on SSB but I have come to recognize that many in our ham community have moved over to the digital communications dark side and therefore challenged myself to enable my SSB rig design to "do digital". I am happy to report that I have been successful in running both WSPR and FT8 from the new rig.
All that was needed was the software WSJT-X, a $10 (delivered) sound card interface board, some cables and an old computer with a serial port DB9 connector. That is it. 

With technology advancement comes change. Most new computers do not come with a serial port and thus that presents some difficulties in using the sound card interface device. …
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2018 ~ The Year of SSB Transceivers

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Something for the SDR Crowd!
You too can build your own SDR Transceiver!

Second Generation Main Board


The board above is a second generation board and contains the two ADE-1 Detectors and the Modem coupling transformers, the divide by four 74AC74 and to be installed is the band pass filter. If you look close you can see the ferrite core balun used to split the signals going into the two detectors. This is a deliberate attempt at isolating signals and keeping things neat and tidy. I am thinking about a separate enclosure just for this board. Later today I will install the bandpass filter with the intent that it may be used at 9 MHz with a possibility of a different front end. You will have to stay tuned for this.
How about using the SDR on WSPR?



While I can claim I built this rig and added several modifications, by and large the credit goes to Charlie Morris ZL2CTM for his design and software development. You can follow ZL2CTM on YouTube and he has many videos and tutorials!
The bottom line…
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2018 ~ The year of SSB Transceivers

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Boat Anchor to Silk Purse.


Start looking for some old boat anchors as they offer possibilities for upgrading to modern radios.  Right now I am personally trying to locate a reasonable condition, reasonably priced Heathkit Hot Water HW-32 or HW-32A. The plan --Color TFT/Arduino/Si5351 upgrade so it will have full band coverage and offer switchable sidebands. Possibly even CW with the 3rd Clock. Email me at n6qwham@gmail.com  if you have one of these rigs hiding in your garage and are looking for a new home for this jewel of the 1960's. Remember reasonable condition and low cost. If I can do this to a HW-101 just think what a HW-32 or 32A would look like.

73's Pete N6QW
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2018 ~ The Year Of SSB Transceivers

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7/29/2018 ~ Arduino Code for LCD to OLED replacement http://www.n6qw.comLook inside the Purple framed text for the link to the code. You will also have to have the included files -- see the notes in the sketch and as mentioned below. If you are unsure on how to do this … don't try it.
73's Pete N6QW Secrets Revealed: How to Add a Tune Tone and CW Identifier to your Homebrew Rig. 7/27/2018Disclaimer: I am not a software programmer nor do I profess to have those skills but I am a person who likes to tinker with things. For several years now I have had a Pulsed Tone TUNE capability with my rigs. I developed the code myself and even figured out how to change the screens to show you are in TUNE. For those who do software on a daily basis --you probably snicker (a lot) at my code. Frankly that is unimportant in that what I developed works!
So today I said to myself "Pete why can't you add a CW identifier following the pulsed tone?" So I did and it works! How this works is …
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