Left Coast Political Scene

 Back to the Nu-Rig 6/08/2016 ~ An Alternate LO/BFO/Display Systems for the Nu-Rig While there has been a lot of interest and actual implementation in the 128X128 Color TFT worldwide, there are still those hams who want to use a simple 16x2 Backlit LCD for this project. So we did just that and see the photos below. I should confess once again of simply robbing the Let's Build Something original prototype of the parts and so the actual build time was pretty minimal. The Arduino is the Pro-Mini and the board is the Si5351. Not as fancy as the TFT but still serviceable. If any one would like the sketch contact me at n6qwham @gmail.com 73's Pete N6QW 6/04/2016 ~ Revisiting the ZIA 20 Meter SSB Transceiver. In mid-2015 I built the ZIA transceiver which featured Termination Insensitive Amplifiers developed by Wes Hayward and Bob Kopski. Unsatisfied with simply dubbing it the TIA, I decided to call it the ZIA where Z is Impedance thus Impedance Insensitive Ampl...

5/23/2016 ~ Late in the Day Close to a Smoke Test The rig sure cleaned up nice -- not too many jumbled wires!!   Pete N6QW       5/23/2016 ~ Progress on Cleaning up the Rat's Nest!!! As I frequently only 15 or minutes at a time to work on project based on my other commitments, I did manage to get some of the wiring "cleaned up" as you can see below. I use a standard --Yellow for Transmit wiring and Orange for Receive which helps quickly identify wiring to various stages. About two more days and we should be able to run a smoke test. The actual work is maybe only 1 to 2 hours -- but at 15 minutes at any one time stretches the overall schedule.   73's Pete N6QW       5/22/2016 ~ Progress on the Box! The size will be 8 inches wide by 10.5 inches deep and slightly less than 2 inches high. So ask why that size? The bottom plate is a piece of PC Board I had that was the 8X10.5 --so no cutting and as it turns out is...

A New SSB Transceiver from N6QW   Several years ago I prepared and published an article on a 30M CW transceiver. I designed the radio (it even had RIT) , built and tested the radio, wrote the article and quickly placed it the storage locker. I am not a CW fan even though I did take and pass the real Extra exam when you had to copy 20 WPM. I much prefer SSB and so this project is the best of many worlds.   Parts of the 30M CW transceiver have found their way into the ZIA, 20M SSB transceiver and now the mainboard has been reworked to emerge as a 40M SSB transceiver. Some of that effort was to build and install a 6 pole, 5 MHz Crystal Filter and to build an external BFO which will be used to feed the NE602 Product Detector on receive and an SBL-1 Balanced Modulator on transmit.   The original 30M CW transceiver had a varactor tuned VFO but the new rig has the Si5351 that will supply only the LO signal. The display of course is the 128X128 Color TFT. I am amazed...

More Omnia SDR and WSPR-2   31 Flavors of WSPR   Having been successful at implementing the  plain old vanilla WSPR on the Omnia SDR, I thought I would investigate using what is called WSPR-2. Backing up, K1JT (Dr. Joe Taylor) has released a package of software programs that are bundled under one download and simply menu selected. This package is called WSJT-X and the version I used was 1.16 XX   What distinguishes this package is that there are what I call both active and passive programs contained therein. By my definition WSPR is passive -- turn it on and it listens for a set period of time and then can transmit for another period of time. Basically you can turn on WSPR, go to work and when you come home at night you can see who your WSPR rig spotted and who heard your WSPR signal. You just get to look at the reports but the computer had all of the fun. I would call that pretty passive.   The other modes in the package are like WSPR in that t...