Skip to main content

January 23, 2025. Yet another Fire in the LA Area.

Breaking news.

Power outage and the Laguna Fire is 6 miles west of my house. Car is packed with only 1 Radio. If my home gets smoked then it's the end of my boat anchor collection.

An inconvenience but not the end of the world.

There was a popular song many moons ago by Johnny Cash called Ring of Fire. Well, there is a Ring of Fire around the Los Angeles Area. The latest is the Hughes Fire near Lake Castaic about 40 Miles NE from me. As usual a raft of PSPS texts, emails and even phone calls to expect my power to go down for the 4th time in two months. 


Hughes Fire ~ About 9000 Acres

This fire situation is great political fodder for what's his name, but the reality is that I keep nothing in the refrigerator, and I have my go stuff at the front door. But the Hughes Fire is different -- I can smell it, whereas the other fires in the ring were not smelly at this QTH. At 9000 acres burnt that comes to about 14 Square Miles. [9000*43560 / (5280^2) = 14.1 sq miles]

My battery is charged so I have Cell Phone and Laptop charging capabilities. In many respects having the XYL in a Board and Care facility is a plus as her location has had less PSPS shutdowns and there is staff there 24/7 and they have back up Oxygen systems. It would be impossible to care for her here at home with the power off for three or four days. Bright spot: Rain is expected this weekend.

I have simulated a J310 JFET general purpose amp stage using LT Spice. Indeed, the results looking promising and so a bit more work toward a low power consumption emergency rig. Too bad I keep having to delay things because of the PSPS situation.
 
 
 
This simulation is just a starting place as the simulation of the 500 Ohm filter is just a plug circuit to see if this could work. More simulation time is needed to accurately represent the actual 9 MHz filter and then see the gain across the module.
 
Them that know can make it go.

73's
Pete N6QW

Popular posts from this blog

January 26, 2024. A simple CW Transceiver/Transmitter

Cruise through the lower part of the ham bands bands and what do you hear? Well, FT-8 and CW. Often you will not hear any SSB stations yet go to the lower part of the bands, and it is a cacophony (I love that word) of bad sounding signals and some high-speed keying. Fast is not so much of the issue as is bad, run together and jerky keying. But none the less our hobby started there.    So, you could crank down your ICOM 7300 and watch the waterfall on CW or you could homebrew a radio. Actually, to do CW right you need more thought up front than you do with a SSB transceiver. Often, I will state that a CW Transceiver is much more difficult to build than a simple SSB rig. I published two articles in QRP Quarterly on CW transceivers and all I got was a yawn so maybe history will repeat itself.  Yawn!   30M CW Transceiver with RIT!   Of interest is that the LO is a Varactor tuned LC oscillator using a NE602. Look closely at the RIT circuit which is only activated on ...
Read more

March 31, 2024. Happy Easter to those who celebrate this day.

What a great day to Binge on Chocolate and experience the pain of that filling that has been leaking.  I would be in that category with the leaking filling(s) had I not just spent an amount equivalent to one of the fancy new uptown appliance box transceivers on two filling repairs. Well at least I can binge on the Chocolate bunnies without fear of pain. Regrettably everything appears to have jumped in price including the price of parts. Well not so much the parts as the shipping costs.  That notably is seen in the eBay treasures. I spotted a nice heathkit DX-20 for about $50 and the shipping was $65. Likely it is a twofer with part being a way to in effect charge a higher price by inflating the shipping and in part by increased shipping costs. Shipping with insurance across the US was about $150 for this jewel and that was three years ago. 6AM on the Left Coast ~ 20M Easter Sunday! My only hope is the cost of Chocolate Bunnies remains steady although a pound of See's Candies f...
Read more

August 30, 2024. A PNP 20M SSB Transceiver

Shown below is the Block Diagram for the 20M PNP SSB Transceiver steered in the  Transmit Mode . The components shown in the dotted block are relay steered so that the block module is single pass and amplifies in a single direction. The Block diagram show steered in Transmit.  Essentially the steering process works so that the IF Module input follows the Balanced Modulator on Transmit and then the input side follows the Receive Mixer on Receive. All done with some relays and a bit of RG174U coax. For those who count things in detail, this block diagram is not unlike what was used for the PSSST Transceiver which can be found on my website . Yes, a warmed over P3ST only using PNP devices. TYGNYBNT. 73's Pete N6QW
Read more