Left Coast Political Scene

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 ...

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 v...