I am very excited for the opportunity to go back to Dayton so soon after my last trip. I really didn't expect to have the chance to go again for quite a few more years, so the ability to get back to the convention after only two years is a great blessing. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Jennifer, who didn't hesitate to encourage me to go, even though she will be dealing with a 2-month-old baby and a near 2-year-old by herself for a few days while I'm away.

In other news, I feel like I've gotten over the steep part of the learning curve with Kicad, having successfully made PCBs for my little Twin-T code practice oscillator. You can see a short video of it in action above. The output level is suitable for modern, sensitive headphones, but if you want room-filling audio such as in my video, you'll need to connect it to an amplified speaker. The PCB is designed to fit in the ubiquitous Altoids tin, with room to spare for a 9 V battery.  I expect that this will eventually make it to my stable of products, but it's low priority considering the long delay on the CC-Series and the need to get it ready to sell by May. If you are really interested in the project, write a comment or shoot me an email (milldrum at gmail) and I'll see if I can't work something out to get you hooked up with a kit early.

The OpenBeacon project is cruising right along. Now that I know that I can successfully make a PCB with Kicad, I've taken the plunge and decided to migrate all of my workflow there (I think this will include the next board spin of CC-Series, since there are so many changes to be made there will be no real advantage to staying with TinyCAD/FreePCB). The OpenBeacon PCB design is nearing completion. Once I get a shipment from Mouser in the next few days to verify that my newly-created PCB footprints match the actual physical components, I'll be ready to submit my CAM files to Seeed Studio for prototype boards. With any luck, I'll have them back within about two weeks. (Protip: it's worth taking the time to place your component against a 1:1 printout of your Gerber to make sure it will fit. Don't ask me how I know this.)

Once those CAM files are off to China, it will be full-bore on the CC-Series. With the deadline of mid-May staring me down hard, I figure I will have to get those CAM files out within no more than three weeks. That will put me into mid-March for getting the PCBs back, which will give a pretty slim margin of time to beta test and prepare the kit for final sale. Going to be pulling some long, late-night shifts...that I can already see.

I've also got a few more projects in the pipeline for after FDIM and the deployment of CC-Series and OpenBeacon. The first is a fairly simple and inexpensive VXO DC transceiver that I hope to initially kit for the high bands of 10, 12, and 15 meters. It uses a topology which is somewhat unique. The other is an extrapolation of the receiver circuitry of this rig to use as a dedicated QRSS grabber receiver. But I may be getting a bit ahead of myself. Let's get this CC-Series launched, then see where the winds take us.

I can finally let the cat out of the bag. As I alluded to on Google+ a few weeks ago, lots of stuff was happening behind the scenes here. One of the biggest pieces of news I can now share with the world. You can probably tell from the image above: we're having another baby! Noah gets to be a big brother!

We got another small surprise today. The initial due date was estimated to be in the 2nd week of March. Jennifer went in for an ultrasound today so that her OB/GYN could estimate the baby's gestation age better and it turns out that the baby is a bit further along than we thought. The new due date is the 3rd week in February. If this one is anything like Noah, he or she might be late, so there's a chance this could be a leap year baby. Cool!

It's going to be nuts having two little ones close to the same age running around here, but we both wanted Noah to have a sibling close in age. Besides, I'm creeping closer and closer to 40, so I figured we better git 'er done now, so that the teenage kids don't break my hip when we are roughhousing.

I feel a bit crazy trying to launch a new business, develop a brand new radio, be a stay-at-home dad, and welcome a new baby into the world. But what fun is life if you don't try something crazy every once in a while?

Update

Here's a quote from Wes describing the equipment that he was using on his end:

I hope that my signal was OK when we worked.   I was in the midst of wrapping up a frequency synthesizer project and had it running on the rig for the first time.   When I heard you on 20, I could not resist calling.  You were the first contact using that source.   But I then discovered that the PLL was oscillating.   It was a low level oscillation and didn't present an obvious problem with regard to what I heard on the air.   But it was there.   I have since then changed the phase/frequency detector circuitry and have eliminated the oscillation.   I am not thrilled with the 74HC4046.    I get much more repeatable performance from a dual D FF with a NAND gate.

KE7GKM QSO

Over the last few days, Jennifer has been off work, so I've been able to spend more time in the shack working on Project X. I only recently made my first QSO with the prototype rig (I think propagation was unfavorable for me when I was trying late in the evenings), so I've been leaving the radio hooked up to my bench AF amp and monitoring 7030 kHz during the day.

Late this afternoon, I heard a very strong station calling CQ just a bit up from 7030. I bumped the VFO up a bit and found that it was KE7GKM calling at a nice, comfortable speed for me (my CW is rusty after quite a few months off the air). While I called him back, the thought occurred to me that the call sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember how. After getting the QSO basics out of the way, I remembered why. Bob said that he was using a VRX-1 and homebrew QRP transmitter combo! Then it hit me that Bob had just e-mailed me about a week ago to ask me a few questions regarding the VRX-1.

I don't get on the air as much as I should (seems like I'm melting solder way more than pounding brass), but when I get a chance, it means so much to me to have a contact with someone who has built one of my radio designs. It's even more special when I get that make that QSO with a homebrewed radio on my own end as well. If I remember correctly, this is only the second time that I've done such a thing.

Bob told me that he is trying to get to 100 QSOs with his VRX-1/HB TX combo, and that I was QSO #80 (if I remember correctly, my notes aren't great). I wish Bob all the best of luck in his endeavor. It certainly looks like he doesn't have much more to do in order to meet his goal.

It's hard to beat an experience like this in capturing the essence of amateur radio for me. It is my hope that more amateurs will homebrew their own gear so that they can get that same thrill.

Here's a cheap & cheerful (or in the American vernacular, crappy) panorama that I just did with the open source Hugin software package. Yes, there are some obviously bad stitches, but it gives you an idea of what my newly updated shack looks like. I added the KADA 852D+ rework station, upgraded the shack PC, and got a shiny new 24" TV/monitor. Wish I had more free time to play with Hugin, as I love panorama images.

On the "Project X" front, progress is continuing. The firmware is just getting going, but as soon as I have a barebones firmware, I'm going to send out for my first PCBs for beta testing. Hopefully that will be within about two weeks. Please feel free to send along any questions or suggestions in the comments below!

Born August 2, 2010

9 lb 7 oz

21.5 in

The Goonies still seems to be very popular, with fans making the trip to Astoria to visit many of the familiar settings from the film. If you ever come to my neck of the woods, you should take some time to visit Astoria, even if you don't care for The Goonies. It's a neat little small town with quite a bit of charm and is only a few miles from one of my favorite locations in the entire world, the Oregon Coast. I'm going to give a listen to 40 meters to see if I can snag them this weekend. It's pretty close to Beaverton, but my antenna is low enough that I'm sure I have some energy going straight up and down on 40. I bet they're going to have a great QSL for this one.

CME Filmed By Solar Dynamics Observatory

Check out these incredible photos and videos of a coronal mass ejection taken by the newly commissioned Solar Dynamics Observatory. The clarity and resolution of the images are absolutely stunning. When the CME erupts, you can clearly see the spiraling of the magnetic field lines as they spring up out of the surface of the sun, twist around until a filament breaks off, then collapse back into the surface. It gives you a really good intuitive feeling for the dynamics behind some events which are so important to us hams. I've embedded a YouTube version of the video below, but it's best if you go and download the full resolution versions from the website linked above to see them in their true glory.

After dinner I managed to slip into the shack after Jennifer laid down to rest and I bribed Baxter to leave me alone with a Kong full of treats. I thought about trying to self-spot in order to scare up a QSO, but that didn't seem right. I wanted the first QSO to stand on the rig's own merits, not because I asked someone to listen for me. So I parked somewhere near 7030 kHz and started banging out a straight key CQ with 1 watt output. After about 5 rounds of CQ, I started getting the sneaking suspicion that I had screwed something up, but I trusted that my pre-QSO checks on the rig were correct. So I kept at it.

After a few more CQs, I finally got my reward. A huge signal about blasted the phones off of my ears! And it was saying my callsign! I got a reply from W7MDK in Peck, ID. I was so excited that the QSO didn't go so great, but we got all of the pertinent information across. He was going a bit faster than I normally copy, and I think my speed was impaired even further because of my extreme excitement. Dick gave my 1 watt a 579, while he was easily 40 dB over S9 here. I cut the QSO short to stop me from embarrassing myself further, but I got the first one in the log!

It's said that there isn't much better for the homebrewer than to turn on that newly created receiver and hearing signals off the air for the first time. It's hard to argue with that, but I think that making a complete first QSO with a rig you designed and built yourself has to top even that experience. Sorry to toot my own horn so shamelessly, but I'm just thrilled with the love of radio right now.

The next steps are to get going on the documentation for the judges, get the prototype into an enclosure, and start working on a second copy of the rig to make sure I can duplicate it from the schematic. I can't wait to share the design details with everyone, but that's going to have to wait for another month or so. In order to get the rig within the required parts count, I had to trim the receiver down to 34 parts. The transmitter ended up being 30 parts and the VXO came in at 8 parts. However, I was able to make the Clackamas a true transceiver, not just a trans-receiver.

Stay tuned for additional details as I can release them!

Update: Just worked JF2QNM in the JIDX contest. 1 watt spans the Pacific! Of course, all of the credit goes to the op on the other end, but it's still really gratifying to have your HB 1 watt signal make a nice hop like that.

KC2UHB with EFHW Tuner

Our favorite fashion hacker/ham, Diana Eng, KC2UHB, has posted a new article on the Make Magazine blog with instructions on how to build an End-Fed Half Wave antenna tuner and deploy it with an antenna. (BTW, did you see that she was recently named to the ARRL Public Relations Committee? An excellent choice the League.)

Her BOM calls out an air variable cap from MFJ and a T94-2 'roid, so I suspect that her tuner could handle a bit more than QRP power. In typical ham fashion, it appears that she was too eager to get it on the air to worry about little things like putting it in an enclosure. FB with that Diana, I think most of us can relate.

It sounds like she had great success using this setup with her FT-817 for some SSB QRP fun:

Setting up my antenna for 20m the first time took about half an hour, and I was able to get very close to 1:1 SWR using the 9:1 input with a vertical wire supported by a tree. Over the next hour or so, operating from a park bench in Brooklyn, using 5 watts on sideband, I made contact with stations in the US, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, and Hawaii. The furthest station was about 5000 miles away, which means I was getting 1000 miles per watt out of this setup. I'm sure it was a big contest station and not another QRP operator sitting on a park bench with a wire antenna, but it was still fun.

I'll take this opportunity to shamelessly promote my own EFHW tuner, which I've managed to get back up on my new website. Don't forget to compare to AA5TB's design, which features probably the best page on this subject matter which I've seen.