Homebrewing
Progress on CC-Series development proceeds at a reasonably-good clip right now. One of my last big hardware bugs to stamp out is some nasty microphonics that seem to be generated by the combination product detector/BFO. Today, I believe that I made some significant progress towards solving it and wanted to share what I learned. I've done a [...]
Continue reading about Single-Ended Mixers and Reverse Isolation
I decided to make my initial Project X prototype PCBs at home using the old tried-and-true method of toner transfer (via Pulsar Professional paper and foil). Since I'm a novice at PCB layout, I didn't feel comfortable paying the money for a few proto PCBs from a board house, then finding out that I did [...]
Continue reading about Creating PCBs with "PCB Fab-in-a-Box"
I'm starting to build up the gear for the kitbiz to get off the ground, and the first large investment just arrived at the shack. Thanks to some blog posts from Eldon WA0UWH, I found AmScope.com, who sells all manner of microscopes for low prices. I ended up finding a scope that was very similar [...]
Since FDIM 2010 is in the history books, it is my pleasure to finally publicly release my entry into the FDIM 2010 QRP Challenge: The Clackamas 40 Meter Transceiver. The rig is a VXO-tuned superhet that operates around 7.030 MHz. The heart of the design is the BF998 dual-gate MOSFET (which was popularized by W7ZOI [...]
I recently received a very interesting e-mail from Dave W8NF regarding a very spiffy looking labeling technique that he successfully used for his latest LogiKlipper prototype (BTW, LogiKlipper is going to kick the butt of the RF clipper manufactured by that other company in the South...). Here's the details on how he did it: I [...]
Over the last week or so, I've been coming home from work nearly every morning thinking about ways to tweak the Clackamas (FDIM 2010 QRP Challenge) rig. I'm sure that Jennifer is wondering if I have OCD at this point. This morning I was able to stamp out the last few bugs in project and [...]
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.) [...]
As I mentioned in a previous post a few days ago, I found a nice 2 watt mono audio amplifier board that's a perfect addition to give speaker capability to a receiver with headphone output. I purchased four of these bad boys since they were so inexpensive (and I was paying for shipping from Hong [...]
Lately, I've found that eBay has been one of the best ways to beef up my junk box with inexpensive electronics components (eBay Stores are my preference, the auctions often aren't that great). I purchased a nice SMD resistor/cap assortment from a company called Sure Electronics and found that they have some other goodies that [...]
Software Defined Radio is a technology which has always intrigued me, but something I just haven't been able to devote a lot of time to yet. I've built an early model SoftRock and studied the basics of the theory. Not too long ago, I built up my own little version of a 40 meter SDR [...]
