Category: Construction

Running four QRPp modes in a ten minute frame

Over the last month or so I’ve been doing some experimenting using a newly built Hans Summers Ultimate 3S transmitter fitted with the new oven controlled crystal oscillator and I’m now running four different modes in a single ten minute frame with space at the end for a calibration cycle. You should note that to […]

Building a QRP Labs OCXO

The top of the completed OCXO

I’ve not posted much this year because I’ve not been doing much new stuff. I’m still messing around with the very low power modes and enjoying that a lot. I’m transmitting WSPR and QRSS all the time and tend to leave the transmitter running on one band/mode for a month or so at a time. […]

20m QRSS warmup

I’ve had this screenshot sitting on my desktop for a while because I think it’s quite interesting. It shows my 20m QRSS signal from when I switched the transmitter on, for a period of nearly four hours.  You can see how it takes almost an hour to warm up and calibrate itself to the correct […]

Putting up a 40m vertical for the winter

40m vertical in my back garden

Last weekend, following the Martello Tower Group DXpedition to Herm Island, I put up a 40m vertical in my back garden.  Not just any 40m vertical, it’s exactly the same one we used to great success on Herm.  It’s made up of a 12m Spiderpole with a 1/4 wave vertical element and around 30 radials. […]

Winding coils and building filters

Low pass filters for the Hans Summers Ultimate 2 transmitter

Some time ago I posted saying that I’ve been winding lots of coils and since then I also mentioned that I started work on a set of 5B4AGN filters and some of those was shown here. Since then, I’ve completed a full set of low pass filters for my WSPR/QRSS transmitter and here they all […]

Running WSPR and QRSS [almost] at the same time

Last month I mentioned that I’d bought a new kit, the “Ultimate 2” transmitter from Hans Summers.  I hooked it up with a GPS module and it almost worked perfectly.  There were a couple of issues with 2.01 of the firmware and I assisted with beta testing the 2.02 firmware.  While testing it, I made […]

Running WSPR (and QRSS) at 200mW

I’ve written a fair bit about WSPR in the past and posted reports of where my signal has been heard using just five watts output.  I’ve also written about QRSS including details of the transmitters I’ve built and shown reports of where I’ve been captured. A few weeks ago I heard about a new QRSS kit […]

A productive radio day

Today has been a day for doing things.  I’ve only had one QSO on the wireless but I’ve spent a lot of time doing radio related stuff. I started off this morning by getting all the bits together for my set of 5B4AGN bandpass filters.  My first attempt to wind one of the toroids was […]

Modifying my 40m delta loop to work on other bands

Back in June 2011 I put up a horizontal delta loop for 40m and I wrote about it at some length here.  Since then, I’ve made a few changes to my aerial for the lower bands, experimented with an off-centre fed dipole, a resonant dipole for 40m and a doublet fed through my SGC smartuner before […]

Building a set of 5B4AGN bandpass filters

For the Martello Tower DXpedition to Herm, I borrowed two complete switchable 5B4AGN bandpass filters, we had one connected to each radio to prevent the two stations interfering with each other and they worked very well.  I’d decided before we went to Herm that I wanted to build a set of these filters myself and […]