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 […]
Category: Construction
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 […]
Data (RTTY/PSK) contesting – The anatomy of an ideal QSO
I like contesting. I like data contesting and I operate a lot in data contests. I don’t generally have the time to dedicate to making a winning entry although for the big events, I’ll try and make a good score and aim to finish high up in the table. I’ve done well enough though and […]
Testing my dummy load
Back in August last year I built a dummy load out of a bunch of resistors, a paint tin and some oil. I said at the time that it seems to work fine on HF but not so well on VHF. After I used the load last weekend to test my aerial, I thought perhaps […]
Winding coils for various radio projects
Over the last few days I’ve found myself winding coils for construction projects. I dug out my MKARS80 kit from where it’s been sitting for the best part of a year and the next stage was fitting some trifilar wound transformers. These are made by lightly twisting together three lengths of 38swg enamelled wire and […]
The CQ WPX RTTY Contest 2012
Anyone who follows me on Twitter or reads this site will have noticed that I was planning on taking part in the CQ WPX RTTY contest last weekend and that I was keen to sort my aerial out in advance. I lowered the mast, fitted my new balun along with two new coax tails and […]
You can never have too many 0.1uF decoupling capacitors
A couple of weeks ago I needed to repair my iPod transmitter for the car and the fix was a simple one – Resolder the power supply cable and replace the decoupling capacitor because it had broken. The problem was that I had no ceramic disc 0.1uF capacitors. I ended up using a miniature multi-layer […]
