Homebrewing
A little while ago, I got a hankering to work on a SSB transceiver. It's something that I've never homebrewed before, and it seemed it like it might be fun to tackle. The BITX20 seemed like an obvious choice, and W7ZOI recently published an improved bidirectional amp which would be nice to try in the [...]
Although there are many days when I can barely stand the level of rudeness on QRP-L (and increasingly on qrp-l.org), I am sometimes reminded why I maintain my membership. Some recent events there have helped to boost up the numerator in the signal/noise ratio, and correspondingly, my interest. In case you haven't followed much of [...]
While I occasionally get a bit worried about ham radio having to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, there are encouraging signs that some hams get it. The two areas in ham radio where this seems most pronounced is in Radiosport and DXing/DXpeditions. Outside of the United States, these aspects of the [...]
The VRX-1 receiver kit uses a TDA7052 audio amplifier IC, which is a bit different from your run-of-the-mill LM386. Because of its push-pull output, if you use a phones jack, you must isolate it from ground. This isn't something you have to worry about if you use a non-conductive enclosure or if you have an [...]
While I was away on my honeymoon, I noticed that the upcoming kit that I've been hinting about for months has finally been released. The Four State QRP Group announced availability of the VRX-1 direct conversion receiver. The VRX-1 is a simple 40 meter VXO-tuned receiver (crystal on 7.030 MHz), but it's not your typical [...]
Whew, I just got back from a nice day at the SEA-PAC 2009 convention in Seaside, OR. Due to the *ahem*unstable*ahem* financial situation that I have recently found myself in due to the current economic conditions, I decided a few months ago that I would skip the show this year. However, things ended up changing, [...]
I got a few pleasant surprises this weekend regarding ham homebrewing websites. First off, I received a very nice e-mail from Jonathan, KB1KIX. He stumbled upon my documentation for the Willamette transceiver (AKA the qrp-l.org Group Project), and took the time to do a very nice write-up about it on his blog. There's a lot [...]
A few days ago, I built myself a simple 30 W dummy load out of Caddock power resistors. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was doubtful about the readings that I was getting from my LP-100 (not that I doubted the LP-100 itself, just my calibration of it). Tonight was my first night [...]
