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How to design a 450VDC at 0.1-amp Plate Supply for the 12GE5? Copilot jumps in and gives an opinion. Today Full wave Bridge power supply: 520 VAC, Choke Input at 10Hy, Filter Cap 100 Microfarad at 500 VDC. Bleeder resistor 10K. Is this OK? You're working with a pretty serious high-voltage power supply setup, so let's break it down and assess whether it's safe and functional: ⚡ System Overview Input Voltage: 520 VAC (RMS) Rectifier Type: Full-wave bridge Filter Type: Choke input Choke: 10 Henries Capacitor: 100 µF rated at 500 VDC Bleeder Resistor: 10 kΩ ✅ What Looks Good Choke Input Design: This is a classic approach for high-voltage supplies. A 10H choke provides strong filtering and helps maintain continuous current flow, which reduces peak charging currents and improves regulation. Bleeder Resistor: A 10kΩ resistor is reasonable for safety. It will slowly discharge the capacitor when the supply is turned off, helping prevent electric shock. Capacitor Value: 100 ...

Not unlike the Final RF Cage, a lot of effort will be put into the layout of the front panel. It all started with the 12X12 Inch 5052 Aluminum panel that I cut into two pieces 6X12 inches. I took care in the cutting using the Home Depot newly acquired hacksaw blades to cut a straight line and then went to the CNC mill to true up the edges and to make matching pieces. Along the way I ran the X Axis past the stop and had to do some CNC Mill maintenance work to get that back working properly.  That consumed most of yesterday. Suddenly it became apparent that I needed to rethink the front panel layout as 6X12 is 72 square inches seems like a lot. However, we do have a large tuning knob, a very large display, five knobs, three toggle switches and two audio jacks (Mic and Speaker) and finally a panel meter.  Key to the layout is ergonomics and not getting cables in the way of the critical controls like main tuning, audio output, transmit controls like mic gain and Final Tune. Time f...

It was hot in the garage yesterday and I took advantage of the heat to sweat off a few pounds. I just sweated but didn't lose many pounds! Yesterday's work scope was to install the shielded RF Final enclosure, install the 12GE5 tube socket, the Pi Network and line up the area allocation. This singular installation will drive further installations both on the top and underside of the mounting plate.  I near got a hernia using the chassis punch to cut and 1- and 1/4-inch diameter hole for the 12GE5 in the 1/8-inch aluminum plate. This is where you have to eat your Wheaties. There was extensive measuring, more measuring and still more measuring before cutting any metal. As a starting place I am using a Pi Network from a Junker SBE-33. The loading cap is a high value padder cap. So, the plan is to set that padder value once and then the front panel Tune Control will bring the tank into resonance. This is like the Pi Network in the Hallicrafters SR-160. (No panel mounted Loading Cap...

In a nutshell, most likely overhyped and definitely underperforming. We as Americans, all of us, so much want to get "such a deal" and the Chinese play into that American weakness: Almost a deal but not quite the one we wanted The supply never produced 300VDC but did hold at 280VDC all the way up to 70 MA of current draw. That 20-volt difference at 0.3 amps is 6 watts of power you won't see going into the 12GE5. Shame on me as two of the comments on the product did spell out that deficiency, yet the supply has a high rating. Certainly not from me! How could I be so blind! Dire Straits said it best: Something for Nothing (But the Chicks are Free... BUT No Freebies Here). This supply might be a $1.25 Hooker disguised to look $2.50. I did test this power supply on a CW transmitter to see how it holds up. It did OK with a 6L6 in the socket, where we saw 60 MA of Cathode current, and the Drake Wattmeter said 7 watts in 40M. I attribute the puny output to the lower Plate Voltag...

The watched pot never boils as the new DC power supply didn't arrive until about 7:30 PM last night so no testing until today. The size is deceiving as it is really small.  At the first look, the Amazon bag looked too small. But sure, enough it was the supply. This is good news for making new compact equipment and/or retrofitting existing hardware. I hope it works as this small size aspect shows real promise. Even without a test, the terminals for the 6.3 volts say Ground and 6.3 Volts, thus most likely DC. My post the other day netted a response from a blog reader with a link to a news article regarding Home Depot citing a lawsuit alleging video profiling customers during checkout. The basis of the suit is that this profiling is being done without notice to or permission from the customers. If this is a case my admonition about being watched is more than just a possibility and Home Depot may not be the Lone Ranger. In our legal system (or it used to be) is the concept of innocent...

Later today my new $30 power supply is scheduled to land at my front door. The supply, a switcher, is rated at a wide voltage range input, and supposedly good for 6.3 Volts at 5 amps and 300 VDC at 300 milliamps. Targeted at vacuum tube audio circuits, it is touted as low noise. Before I place all eggs in one basket, I thought it best to do some lab testing and this led me to thinking about test criteria and the actual conduct of the tests. I also generated a concerns list. The first is the price and to put it in crass terms what would you expect from a $2.50 hooker? The price of $30 for the supply raises that same level of concerns. Basically, we heard some good things about this switcher, but I do wonder if the glowing reports may belie that there have been known component failures in the supply. Gasp were those glowing reports AI generated? If it fails at plug in, then we know the awful truth thus there should not be a mushroom cloud of smoke at the 1st application of power. That is...

This past Sunday morning Pasta Pete was at work in the kitchen. I even bought a name tag so when I go to the Grief Group Sessions people know who I am. Should mention that so far, 80 to 90% of the GG attendees are older YL's and the rest are guys like me.   (I had thought about a 2nd Line: I can cook!) Back to Sunday mornings in western Pennsylvania. It was a ritual starting with the family going to 8 AM mass at St. Margaret Mary's Catholic Church followed by breakfast at home and then the magic . Everyone out of the kitchen as my mom whipped up Sunday Dinner served promptly at noon.  There was the homebrew spaghetti sauce with meatballs, breaded eggplant, with a side of zucchini, a tossed green salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and for dessert something out of this world. Supper was usually just a snack as the Sunday Dinner was enough food for a week with the calories to match. It was not unusual to have midafternoon family visitors where mom would hit the freezer for a previ...

As I continue the work on the Hybrid Wireless metal bashing, I will need to cut some aluminum plate using a hacksaw. One piece of stock I have as it stands is too large for my CNC but once cut, I can true it up using the CNC Mill. The problem is the 1st cut and the need now for some fine-toothed hacksaw blades.   Being Saturday, I needed to run some errands and one place I had to visit was very close to the local Home Depot. So, I get to Home Depot and find the Tool Section and the hacksaw blades... $6+ dollars for two blades made in China and likely good for one cut in soft metal before going dull. (I did get a lot of steps on my Smart Watch so that was good.) Finally, you get to the checkout area where there is an array of self-service terminals and no manned cashier stations. There are some terminals that only take cash and some that only take credit cards. I opt for the cash as there is my internal discipline to leave no digital footprint, so I wait for a cash terminal to be av...

A non-radio day yesterday, the local family, son Tim, his XYL Amy and daughter Gina had a fun-filled outing in LA. The first stop was lunch at the Farmers Market (3rd and Fairfax) followed by a tour of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures located close by. N6QW behind the Godfather's Desk Museum highlights included sets from various movies, including models used in filming of movies like 2001, The Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Barbie and of course a desk from The Godfather. Many costumes used in the movies were on display and that was a treat to see a photo of a movie scene right next to the costume. A large tabletop computer generated display was a map of the LA area showing the various studios that literally ringed Los Angeles. A factoid was that in 1902 when the movie business essentially moved from New York to LA the reining industry was oil. In 1929 LA had grown 12X and the driver was the movie business which replaced oil as the industry.  At its heyday LA had over a dozen major ...

In today's world, homebrew frequently uses pre-made circuit boards or that awful ugly unsightly approach with superglue and small copper squares. When I started homebrewing in the 1950's the soup du jour was an aluminum chassis and the use of Greenlee punches for cutting the holes for the Tube sockets. This was frequently called "metal bashing". If you want to do a bit of bash and mash start with the type 3003 or 5052 aluminum as these are the variants that are easy to mill, drill, hammer and beat. The type 6061 is not too good for working with simple hand tools. I had a meeting with myself yesterday and decided to use a base plate of 12X8 inches as I found I had two pieces that were 1/8 inch thick. One piece will serve as the main chassis plate and the second piece will be the bottom plate. I also have a 12X12X1/16-inch piece of aluminum stock that I will cut in half so that the front and back panels will be two pieces 6X12 by 1/16 inch thick. Indeed, metal bashing. ...

C'mon you belong to all of the obscure social media sites, you have the latest iPhone, and Smart Watch, two FT710's and matching Mercury Amps, an 84-inch wall mounted TV with 500 channels and gasp you even voted for what is his name... yet you don't have a CNC Milling Machine. Yesterday I spent a bit of quality time fabricating boards for the new Hybrid Wireless Set made all the easier because I have a CNC Milling Machine. No messy super glue and cut copper pads, just chuck in a blank board and push the start button.  The additional advantage of the CNC is the board layout is standard and pays attention to preventing unwanted feedback loops, provisions for heatsinks and standard mounting arrangements. I would rather spend my bench time soldering parts to a board versus trying to unstick my fingers or remove superglue from my fingers so I can use biometrics with my smart phone.  Two BPF's and an IRF510 RF Amp According to a guy who should know, he stated that smart phone...

In the development of the original 40M Wireless, I purposefully used two separate Band Pass Filters. The original Swan 120, which was the template for the wireless it had tuned coils. I converted that part of the design to broad band with the BPF ahead of the 12BA6 RF amplifier stage Another innovation was the use of a homebrew 2.5 mHy ferrite core choke in the plate circuit of the 12BE6 transmit mixer where a couple of turns of wire on the FT-82-43 core provided a 50 Ohm tap point. From this tap point the transmitted signal passes through a second Band Pass Filter and on up the RF transmit chain. A simple mod to the 40M Hybrid Wireless gave proof of life that receive on 20M was quite good. Two more changes are needed to prove 20M transmit and these include a 20M transmit BPF and the 20M LPF following the genuine IRF510's (from Jameco... no BoJack's here.) This design uses 9-50pF Trimmer caps available from Jameco Electronics. If you parallel a 150pF cap with C1 and C2 and repl...

About 3 AM this morning, my brain said: Hey Pete, how about doing this. The suggestion was to take the 40M Hybrid Wireless and make that into the 20M version. The brain also suggested "Plug In" networks so that I could operate on either 40 or 20 Meters without resorting to a band switch.  Plan View of the 40M Wireless The above photo is the 40M Wireless sans any Final Output stage. Yes, a real mess that would have to be totally recreated for a new singular 20M version. For starters, this version works, and we have a good sense of the physical space required and a layout that could fit in our 12X12 space. But could this work on 20M is the question. It was an easy test to ascertain the feasibility of such a project change and the short path was to program one of the spare ESP32 boards for 20M and dig into the junk box for a 20M Band Pass Filter Board. Boom... it worked as I copied stations on 20M and so that is a good idea worth pursuing. This approach gets me a finished radio ...

Every Friday I go to the cemetery for my weekly visit with the XYL. While the Santa Clara Catholic Cemetery in Oxnard does a pretty good job of mowing the lawn, that is it. So, I always have to do some grass trimming around the headstone and the ground mounted flower holders. In some ways the additional time it takes to trim the grass and tidy up lets me spend more time on the visit. Up until about three weeks ago I was using a newly acquired pair of hand operated shears. Then I realized my constantly sore right hand was a result of carpal tunnel shearing. That led me to Amazon and this jewel. Fully rechargeable (even from a laptop) it is good for about 20 to 30 minutes of cutting. Fitted with two attachments it can trim the grass as well as trim bush branches up to about 1/4 inch in diameter. Charging takes about 1/2 hour. It is well made and worth the $40. There is always joy in seeing the two young Hispanic sisters who sell flowers at the cemetery entrance as they are still here. An...

The culprit was a flag that had to be set to 1 in software and not to 0. With a heap of thanks to KK4DAS, Dean, who alerted me to the issue which resulted in the code being operational. So now I will go back and fix the 40M Hybrid Wireless so it can do FT-8 on USB. (Done!) But my fumbling was an excellent learning experience, as I saw the opportunity for other improvements which I made. The bonus is the learning of a skill much akin to field stripping my .45 Automatic blindfolded when I was in the Seabees (or Mary Jo in the backseat of the 57 VW Beetle). When you get it, you get it! So, I now can move forward with laying out the 12X12 inch mounting plate. to include the eight tubes in the lower-level stages, the solid-state stages (Audio Amp and RF Driver) and the final RF Amp, the 12GE5.  The Finalized Digital LO/BFO The above module took almost a month to build and troubleshoot. But there was real significant learning in how to work with the JF3HZB code. One shortcoming (sideband...