Pay More and Get Less. Flash the Cash!

Today is Happy Podcast Day and a large Tip of the Cap to N2CQR who has had the SolderSmoke Podcast for over 2o years. Bravo Bill, and you can acclaim being on the leading edge with this media communication forum about our wonderful hobby. It has been a honor to ride along with you for a small portion of those 20 years! This is a Pixie CW Transceiver and certainly can be had at low cost but not at Walmart.com. I was surprised to find out Walmart sells ham gear. Pixie S but not at Walmart.com  Having few parts and a PCB it should appeal to our demographic. It is low cost too!  Basically, it is a kit comprised of two transistors and an IC plus a crystal for operation on 40M. A Crystal Oscillator runs all of the time to supply an LO on receive to a detector as you would have in a Direct Conversion Receiver. Upon keying the circuit, you get a substantial power Output from the second transistor. The downside is no QSY as such and you have but a single frequency radio.  Worldwi...

What a great question! I wasn't asked to do that, but I don't even know where to start.  I know of several designs that used but a single device and friend N2CQR took on that challenge, but I think ended up using two devices. Here is a LINK to a whole lot of CW transceiver projects and one that caught my eye if only from the very clever aspect -- the Toaster CW transceiver. The designer took a defunct toaster case and built a rig inside the former breakfast special enclosure.  Now in my book he would have gotten extra points if he kept the toaster function AND built the rig inside the case. There is nothing like a warm bagel and bagging some DX. We started with a minimum part count premise and some of those projects in the listing are anything but simple. I think the operative word is simple as that connotes minimum part count, less opportunities to screw up, a short time from parts collection to on the air. That short time frame solves the instant gratification prevailing fe...

What can I do next? I have thought of veering off into a discussion of the mess the majority of American voters made last November. But that will certainly reduce to a small number those who would read the blog. No one likes to hear they did wrong! Or given my newly initiated Sunday church activity with the Grief Grope I could talk about the stages of grief; but that will certainly turn off another segment. So, with that tangent it is likely I would be writing by and for myself as a single reader of the blog. Cleverly we have eliminated the supposed two non-subjects to be discussed by hams.  But the technical side is also a minefield. It would be interesting to develop a demographic of today's average ham operator. Certainly not in the 18-34 demographic for that group has a focus on the third subject not discussed on ham radio. Our target ham group is older but not necessarily in the licensed for 50 years group. Many are recently licensed hams following retirement. Interestingly ma...

My recent adventure with Vacuum Tubes suggested the theme of todays' posting. Yes, CW transmitters. Who does CW? Well, not a lot of hams but it is like climbing Mt. Everest... some make the effort. I am appalled at the cost on junk type CW transmitters on eBay and even after spending a King's Ransom for one you are not done.  Many of the parts like capacitors have reached their end of life and likely the tubes are flat. So, more costs. There is a bonus to building a homebrew CW transmitter and that is the low cost, small sized power supply from Amazon. You can buy a supply for less (a few pennies less) than $30. There is enough juice in that supply to deliver more 5 to 10 watts to the antenna. That will net pages full of contacts! The linear hunk of iron supplies cost a fortune but with this Amazon supply... it plain works and NO SWITCHING noise in the receiver. You don't have to hit send as I am sure that was a burning question. In one of my earlier blog posts I covered th...

I have an extensive stock of T-50-6 powdered iron Toroids, but thought I ought to have a few T-50-2's. So, I navigated to Kits and Parts and a bag of 25 is $6, or less than 25 cents apiece. That sounded pretty good! Next, I started to complete the order only to find that the weight was 5 grams and that turned into an additional cost of $11.01. The shipping and handling are almost 2X the product cost. I decided to pass on the 25-piece order and instead scour my junk box to find two T-50-2's. [Found one in about 5 seconds.] Amidon which is about 70 Miles from my QTH wants $14 for the shipping with a similar actual product cost.  It is funny how one event triggers many others. Recently I stole an octal socket from a power supply for the Hybrid rig and then replaced it which prompted my digging out an old CW transmitter to test the repaired supply which caused me to wind a toroid and that all worked. But I only had one crystal on 7030 which prompted me to look for more crystals.  ...

Spent yesterday doing final punch list items like installing the bottom plate and anchoring in the power supply cage cover. This has been a rewarding project insofar as addressing the many small obstacles and technical issues. Regrettably this project is somewhat depressing as it also now fully convinces me I should have gone into the amateur radio equipment manufacturing business. Too late now. In giving this a bit more thought the whole project involved an Engineering Team consisting of one person... me. Just think what I could have really done with a bigger team. There were no kits or BOMs involved, and the rig has parts from over 55 years ago, while at the same time it blends mostly old technology with new technology. It required writing CNC software to cut the various metal pieces and a lot of engineering and tribal knowledge to pull it off. In essence this was a totally homebrew project including the power supply. One of the nicest comments I received was that it looked factory ...

Yesterday at noon, I checked into the Jefferson Noontime Net. The net control station was in Petaluma, CA, about 400 miles from me. I got a 5X9 with good audio quality report.  Petaluma in case you didn't know was the film location of the movie American Graffiti and is home to the Petaluma Poultry Processors . The PPP used to have a large sign in front of their plant location declaring: We use every part of the chicken except for the "cluck". Despite what you may have heard, chicken blood is not used as a coloring agent in ladies' lipstick. Spent yesterday doing some clean up and further installations like a safety cage around the open power supply. Below are more photos of the actual build. BTW no one more surprised than me to see my 12GE5 Final Amp design worked. Top View of the Homebrew Rig Rig and Power Supply Open Power Supplies. See later photo. Separate Band Pass Filters The liberal use of cable ties. 12GE5 Underside. Note the HB RF Choke 227 Microhenry 22 Turn...

This project was a bit more complex than most of the stuff I do. You ask why? Well, I had a bunch of working modules on a wooden board that had to be refitted into a homebrew enclosure and still work after reinstallation. I needed a special power supply that had to be designed and built, and I also had to design a vacuum tube final amplifier. It is one thing to 1st determine a size of an enclosure and then create the electronic modules to fit that real estate envelope. The other way around is to have all the modules that are spread out on a wooden board and then try to mash that "blob" into a reasonably sized enclosure. This latter approach is more difficult.  Nearly Completed Mostly Vacuum Tube Wireless This is where it started! Proof of Life! I am pleased at how the rig looks, but it took a lot more noodling to figure that out. I can see some wasted space but for the most part all of the modules were already built, and this drove the final configuration. I tried to place th...

Confession Time! I smoked my Analog Multimeter (VOM)  as that what happens when you put 500VDC across the meter when it is set to measure Ohms. I purposefully bought this VOM for use with high voltage so I wouldn't smoke my expensive DVM.  My plan worked, but now I needed a replacement VOM, and this is the jewel from Amazon. You get a lot of capability for $30 including spare fuses inside the case. It even has a powerful magnet on the back so if you put it on a magnetic surface it won't move like when you are working on a car. A New VOM for N6QW Here 1s an interesting proposition for those whose only amateur radio activities are contests and operating. Since you don't homebrew you have do something with your license.  There are declared Micronations within the United States and one of those is in California known by the name the Republic of Slowjamastan run entirely by the Sultan of Slowjamastan. It is complete with purported land mines and where the wearing of Crocs is...

I needed to get lots of work done on Saturday as I will be at our local Catholic Church sponsored Grief Group today, (Sunday) and that creates a big hole for any ham stuff.  A surprise from the 1st Grief Group Session was that here it is a special Catholic Church Event, on a Sunday and no one passed the basket to squeeze a bit extra out of my wallet. I should count my blessings. Basically, I accomplished the following on Saturday: Wired the 12GE5 socket complete with the Bias network. Installed and Wired the Pi Network. Connected the Receive and Transmit Band Pass Filters as well as the Cathode Meter. Work remaining is the hook up of the power connector wiring. But I want to do that when I am fresh. Pi Network Compartment Rx Tx Band Pass Filters Most of the Under Chassis Wiring Slightly Different View of the BPF's Top View of the Mostly Vacuum Tube XCVR Power Plug: Fit Check for further wire dressing Finally, is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I lifted an octal socket from a p...