Having a wheel of fortune like device in my garage I use that to select topics for the blog. Today it landed on 17Meters.
This band undoubtedly is a Hidden Gem! Typically, devoid of any contest crap like Field Day it can provide many contacts including DX QSO's, all at QRP power levels. I worked my 1st ever station on Saipan using FT-8 at 5 watts on 17M.
The bonus is it usually is devoid of those hams in call areas 5, 7 and 4 who start cocktail hour at 6:00AM -- you know the ones that lurk on 75 M.
Some 17 years ago I built my 1st ever 17M SSB Transceiver. That was my 1st attempt at building a Shirt Pocket SSB transceiver which didn't quite get there but it was small. The IF was at 4.9152MHz and used a crystal switched VXO that covered most of the phone band. The final was an MRF260 which was good for about 3 watts output.
Fast forward to 2023 and I decided that technology would move that radio from VXO to the Digital world and taking the 7X7X2 aluminum chassis enclosure it was modified to incorporate a rather spiffy looking Color TFT display.
N6QW 17M Homebrew SSB Transceiver
17M SSB VXO Version
Of note it has two VFO's with memory and the 2nd VFO boots up on the FT-8 frequency. This affords a quick way of checking band activity. If there are FT-8 signals present, then the band is open.
Couple this jewel with my Digital Adapter along with a Raspberry Pi Zero W and you are cooking on FT-8. An advantage of 17M aside from sidestepping the inebriated hams is that the antennas can be quite small so great for those small postage-stamp sized lots.
Now a twizzle on this project would be to add a second set of Band Pass and Low Pass Filters so that when you switched bands instead of 18.1MHz the rig would boot up on 40M. The SPST band switch below the display would be changed out with a DPDT switch and add the filters and you are there! One or two lines of code changes would round out the conversion.
TYGNYB. The 40M would open things up for the POTA/SOTA guys.
73's
Pete N6QW
PS: Someone will ask so best answer this up front. I used the existing on-board Crystal BFO so the change in 2023 did not include the LSB/USB select. If the two-band version is in the "idea chamber" then it would be best to actually "ON" the BFO in the Si5351. Just the value of the BFO is used in the code for a proper display and the BFO is not actually turned ON in the code. If you choose simply to run the LO at 2 MHz and sideband inversion would automatically give you LSB. NOT a great idea because of BFO harmonics slipping through the 7MHz BPF. This was covered in the link. Thus, placing the LO above 40M would be the better option and using the LSB Carrier Oscillator frequency. You would also need a USB/LSB select switch to the mix.