N6QW -- Left Coast Radio

A New Toy on the N6QW Workbench! 3/29/2020 ~ Your uBitx may contain a critical part of the next generation of Covid 19 Ventilators. 3/30/2020 -- Double Balanced Mixers! I am happy to report that Mouser now carries the ADE-1 Double Balanced Mixers and are available in single lot quantities for about $6 and some change. Nice!  Just checking I went to the SolderSmoke Blog and searched in the Amazon block and typed in Double Balanced Mixers and this is what showed up ($1000) It is a mixer; but probably won't work too well in my design. Guess it is important to be specific. Pete N6QW ******************************** [ I have a sudden interest in 3D Printers. Looking for recommendations firstly, on a good software package as that is probably more important than the machine itself and likely dictate what I buy. Given a robust software, secondly is a specific machine recommendation in the $300 to $400 range. My interest is in making knobs --big knob

LBAPT ~ Let's Build a Phasing Transceiver! 3/24/2020 ~ A bit of new hardware! After a Skype session with ZL2CTM and also in an attempt to produce a quadrature output Si5351 --- I finally bumbled and stumbled through  many failures and now have something working (with a lot of help from around the world). The idea of a quadrature output Si5351 has been around for some time, only I was not too successful in implementing the actual hardware -- until now. It gets harder as you get older!  In my conversation with ZL2CTM he mentioned the idea of using a separate Arduino/Si5351 to generate the Quadrature outputs to free up the workload on the Teensy 4.0 which is running at 600 MHz and is fast. This then opens up the possibility of two displays. One could do an amazing spectrum waterfall piece and another would do just the frequency and other housekeeping tasks like Step Tuning Function, Sideband Select, etc. One critical piece is the library that you use for the S

PWKSCDS -- I just realized I made a very bad assumption. It came to me in a dream! 3-20-2020 ~ The emperor's buddies strike again! [But 1st. Some people are saying that 3 Republican Senators got advanced notice of the CV-19 impact and sold huge chunks of stock BEFORE the market crash. Sounds like the swamp got a bit deeper. I sure would have liked to have been privy to that info so I could have sold  my few shares of stock and not taken a hit. Shame on them!] [3/19/2020, 6:43 PM PST. California has essentially been shut down with most businesses to close by midnight. You are permitted limited travel (like taking a walk) and you can buy groceries; but that is about it. Aren't you glad that you now have a project to work on while you are holed up?] A Phasing Rig must have struck a couple of nice chords. Today I got two  inputs from "down under". One VK ham ( Thanks Greg!) has provided me a source for homebrewing your own audio phase shift network w

March 16, 2020 ~ Time Killer Go to soldersmoke.blogspot.com and tune into Podcast SS #219. This is good for 1.5 hours and may help pass some of the time you now have as the USA closes down for business.  I am having a difficult time reconciling what I am seeing on the ground and what we hear from the emperor (with an extremely small e). This is going to get worse! Note: "He is responsible and it happened on his watch!" There was a line at the grocery store this morning at 5:30 AM and the store didn't open until 6 AM. Friends that is 0'Dark 30! How are your stocks doing today? Are the Russian hackers at work trying to penetrate our national health agencies? The emperor (with a very small e) probably will most likely claim it is the deep state who did this. At around 1PM eastern the DOW was down about 2000 points. So emperor (with a very small e) how is your metric doing???? This actually may be a really good time/place to pick up women. But i

ZL2CTM Teensy 3.5 SDR Rig - More! The Teensy 3.5 and RADIG V.3 Are Alive!!!!!  RADIG V.3 & Web SDR 3/10/2020 ~ St. Paddy's Day --a  Week Away! So OK  a small drift into the Pasta Pete mode then back to SDR. My XYL is part Irish (and no part Italian --if she were part Italian we'd probably would have killed each other by now) and loves her traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage St Paddy's Day dinner.  There is a trick to cooking this meal entirely in one large pot. You must have the small white Potatoes, Cabbage Wedges, Carrots and of course the Slab of Corned Beef. Did anyone mention garlic? One year this celebration involved my cooking for 12 guests.  For that dinner I bought a 12 pound slab of Corned Beef from Katz's Delicatessen in New York and had it air shipped to Seattle. That cost me about the price of a Ubitx V.6 with all of the bells and whistles. But hey, it was for the wifey. After dinner I looked for left overs -- there wer