Left Coast Political Scene

4/27/2019 The Future of our Hobby is Here! Forget those simple rigs with homebrew crystal filters, cranky IRF510's and the analog VFO's. SDR is the wave that is building strength just like a Tsunami. With the Soft Rock V6.3 SMD Version + RRPi2 With the Omnia SDR and RPi2 Pete N6QW How Simple & How Cheap can you  build a Homebrew SSB Transceiver? 4/26/2019 --- I just converted my websites from an obsolete Windows Based Server with GoDaddy to their cPanel (Linux). This was a cost issue as a one year renewal of the Windows Server would buy three years on the cPanel. GoDaddy is discouraging the use of what they call the Obsolete Windows System. So I had to migrate and reload the whole pastapete.com, jessystems.com and the n6qw.com sites to the Linux based servers. Some files and links got lost in the translation --so you might not be able to see everything! Essentially I have  to open every link to verify that it works --that may take some tim...

Tinkering with Boat Anchors. The plain old simple relay is an amazing device that frequently finds use in our rigs. It is not unusual for me to have more than six relays in one of my homebrew rigs. I know of one rig without any relays and that is the cousin to the SBE-33 (which has one 4PDT) and that is the SBE-34 with none. Another one I just investigated is the Heathkit HW-18 which is a 200 watt SSB transceiver that was designed for use by the Civil Air Patrol. Not sure we even have a CAP today. The 1st thing you don't spot when you look at its schematic is that indeed there are no relays, yet it works as a transceiver. How can this be? I have often said that in the days of old some of the best radio designers aside from those at Collins worked at Heathkit, R.L. Drake, WRL, National, Ten Tec and Swan. So it is no surprise that Heathkit figured a way to TR without any relays. The first thing I also spotted was that the microphone on the HW-18 was hardwired to the ri...