Left Coast Political Scene

A hallmark of many of the current homebrew rigs is compact size aimed at portable operation and the ever-popular POTA / SOTA events. Half Size OLEDs used as an SDR Spectrum Display are a reality.  But going the other direction for those of us whose eyesight can no longer spot a 29A from a 44DD at a half a mile, then we need bigger displays. The next couple of postings will cover the use of larger displays such as those that employ the ILI9341 scheme. Note you can see the pixels on the display.  Feast your eyes on this display using the ILI9341. I should add that I have several of these displays ranging in size from 1.8 inches to 3.2 inches. The pinouts and the code are the same for either. This is the 3.2 Inch display. ILI 9341 on a Rig Resist simply taking your current display using the ST7735 wiring and "plug er in". You risk smoking something as the ILI 9341 Display inputs like to see no more that 3.3 VDC. Thus, you need a CD4050 level shifter or a simple voltage divider, ...

AI is at work on my Pixel 7 when stuff shows up on the phone like the town Coober Pedy. Well, firstly Coober Pedy is the Opal Capital of the world and so that would put it in the middle of nowhere in downtown Australia. At first, I thought it might be a CIA site like Pine Gap near Alice Springs, but it is not. Other notable info is that it is so hot there that many folks live underground in what is known as dugouts. They even boast dugout motels! Dugout Motel ~ Comfort Inn Coober Pedy [Flash News: A friend in the CIA advises that CP is the home of Fred and Ethel of the AI duo. You heard it here 1st.] There is a real issue in Coober Pedy because so many of the opal mines are shallow and located not too far underground. Many of these mine shafts pass right under the city. Thus, a high risk of sink holes I grew up in Arnold, Pennsylvania and the same issue with the coal mines. One year a whole residential city block started to collapse into an old mine shaft.  But you tuned into this ...

Leave it to Google and their AI Application called Notebook LM to stir up the brain neurons. Several ham friends (N2CQR and KK4DAS) have been dabbling with this AI application -- so yes, I had to try it! But first a sewer backup. The Google App is billed as an assistant that can take your notes or documents and create a summary for presentation. It can also take a You Tube Video and essentially create a conversation between a male presenter and a female presenter that deep dives into the video. They are nameless so let's just call them Fred and Ethel* and that is what they did, a deep dive into one of my recent videos. I chose the video on the resurrection of the Swan SW140 radio that was bought as parts only, needing repair. It was a careful choice as it had technical issues aside from a dirty radio. Thus, I wanted to see how Fred and Ethel did on that part. I had to convert the soundtrack to an MP3 and then make it a video so it could be shown here. The process involved loading t...

For our small band of loyal blog readers, we start with a mystery, a final exam and a real-world electronics problem. These all have an element of troubleshooting. The mystery which may have come from a logic class is as follows. A man goes into a bar and asks for a glass of water. The bar keep reaches underneath the bar and pulls out a gun which he points at the man's head. A short interlude and the barkeep smiles, the man says Thank You and walks out of the bar. So, what just happened? Pause! The man going into the bar had hiccups and with the action of the barkeep -- the man was frightened and the hiccups stopped. Thus, the smile and Thank You. A stretch and something in a thousand years you would never have guessed but plausible. At times troubleshooting a problem is the same -- think subthreshold conduction. Next, we turn to a final exam question. The course was Short Story Creative Writing. The question was: Create a short story that has three elements including a mystery, se...

  One purpose of this blog is to share some Tribal Knowledge. So aside from providing me a soap box to vent about the ARRL, I also try to highlight portions of stuff I have done or to present information on complete projects. Sticking out like a sore thumb, the one posting that garnered about 6X the normal daily views was the Jan 26th posting on the 30M CW transceiver. This was a rig I designed, built and had published in QRP Quarterly.  Recently ZL2CTM's Simple SSB Transceiver got about 3X. Consistently most other postings get the usual small number of daily views.  It takes effort to prepare a blog and in reality, is a great outlet to add a bit of diversion from the daily shifts at the Board and Care facility. This in itself is likely the only reason I continue.  But given we always want something more than day old bread; I really have to stretch picking subjects that cover a wide spectrum of readers.  On balance realizing that hardware homebrewing is dying of...

Those several words: N6QW and LC VFO's said in the same sentence are much akin to wearing Brown Shoes with a Black Tuxedo. But if you are so inclined to use Analog VFO's then hunt and find an Analog VFO assembly from one of the early Yaesu Radios, like the FT-101. The unit is small, but more importantly is linear, stable and clean! Yaesu found the magic decoder ring. I have two Yaesu radios (FTdx100 vintage 1967 and a FT-101EE vintage late 1970's) and both VFOs are just as I described. One of my more successful radio projects was the JABOM* which originally started life as a 17M radio with a homebrew 4.9152 MHz Crystal Filter and VXO. In the Rx Tx Mixer Module, I had two sets of BPF's so with a pin header and Jumper pins I could add in 20M. That worked OK except I got a critical report from someone I trust who said my LSB component was only down about 25 DB. He is an RF Engineer and could actually look at my signal with test gear he has in his shack. That did it! I ripp...

Lauren Sanchez's boyfriend has done it again! Behold a Single Board Computer (SBC) for about $30. The price point is in the range of an Arduino Mega 2560! Meet the Orange Pi Zero , 2W 1GB with expansion board. A Quad Core 1.5 GHz, 64 Bit machine with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is sitting on that small board assembly.  Having a choice of operating systems, it has some real possibilities for integration with your existing ham gear. I mention this since those who are addicted to FT-8 and POTA/SOTA ops, this SBC can do the job in the field!  To make this work with your existing rigs you will need to build a digital adapter using a few readily available parts that won't set you back a king's ransom. Its small size makes it perfect for dragging along up that small hill so you can send CQ SOTA on FT-8. You will also need a small display and a keyboard/mouse. [If you want more info on my homebrew digital adapter, send me an email .] Our hobby is changing and even though you may be incline...

  W7ZOI did a seminal piece on a Hybrid Cascode AGC Circuit . This same circuit was used in my JABOM rig. (JABOM = Just A Bunch Of Modules and published in QRP Quarterly) The original article for Hayward's circuit was published in QST. Originally published in the December 2007 QST , Figure 1 is similar to what was presented in yesterday's Blog Posting. Hayward found that this circuit, however, was sensitive to Vdd dropping below 12VDC.  Figure 2 with a simple change of J2 to a 2N3904 enabled using as little as 8.5VDC to give peak performance. The issue was portable battery operation where a fully charged battery in short order drops below 12VDC. The full-blown circuit is shown below. Homebrewers are indeed fortunate as Todd, K7TFC sells the circuit board for the HyCAS Module  which uses the J310 configuration and so that removes 60% of the effort to replicate your very own HyCAS. Below is an actual build from N6QW as used in the JABOM. This was the subsequent refinement ...

One of the comments posted on the video shared on yesterday's blog essentially said: What no AGC? That observation was based on seeing me adjust the audio gain pot as I tuned across some really loud signals. Typically, I do not include AGC in my rigs although several have that feature using circuitry from W7ZOI. In keeping with the season, I wished we had built in AGC for use on several of the political candidates as they speak about immigrants eating your pets. To implement AGC takes a whole raft of electronics to do it properly. So, for today's discussion let's talk about AGC.  Let us start by theorizing that maybe AGC was invented for use in AM automobile radios. It would be hard to drive down the road and to keep having to adjust the volume which could present a distraction. Just my theory not necessarily the real how or why. Sitting in front of a rig presents less of a safety problem. In essence, AGC levels out the final audio gain so that the volume coming out of the ...