Loot from NEARfest
May 4, 2012
May 1, 2012
More Radio Projects
I probably should post more frequently so I don’t end up with mish-mash posts. My recent projects include;work on a 20 meter QRP rig, helping a friend fix an old military radio, testing a WWII signal generator, and building a one tube regenerative receiver.
Radio Projects
March 25, 2012
filters with ngspice
I’m learning about RF filters, which is a lot of fun, but it’s math intensive (at least for me it is). I’m trying to work with the gEDA tools like gschem and gattrib along with ngspice so I can simulate circuits before I put them together.
gEDA and ngspice together forever
March 23, 2012
The Package Has Arrived! (Spectrum Analyzer)
Actually two packages arrived. I received a bunch of toroids and balun cores from the Toroid King. They seem to have the least expensive toroids around. I look forward to making lots of filters and oscillators with the contents of that package. The star of the show though was my new Atten AT6011 spectrum analyser.
AT6011 review
March 19, 2012
RF Electronics Studies
I had to set aside Experimental Methods in RF Design recently in the middle of chapter two because I needed a refresher in some basic RF electronics. Well, after some external study with the ARRL Handbook, I’m back to plowing through EMRFD. The content is very worthwhile. I’m having some trouble with the typography, but nothing that can’t be figured out. I’ve been experimenting with filters and amplifiers while reading and I’ve been wanting a spectrum analyser to get a better picture of how they work over frequency ranges. Well, my wife agreed to let me plunk down some coin on a new Atten AT6011 spectrum analyser. I hope to receive it this week or next from California. After I get to know it, I’ll write up a review since I haven’t seen a good one online.
March 14, 2012
Star Trek Online
There are better reviews of STO, but I figured I’d throw in my two cents. STO is a lot of fun. The Free to Play option is serviceable but restricted of course. If you’ve thought about playing, I can give one great reason to give it a go. The “2800″ series of episodes (like an epic arc/story line) is a ton of fun. It’s fast paced and moderately challenging. It feels pretty epic. You can pick up the “bread crumb” quest once you reach level 9 called “second wave”. Once I finally got around to travelling to Deep Space 9, it took about two evenings to run through the episodes.
February 21, 2012
Studiously Studying
If you’re interested in the technical aspects of radio, and you have some electronics or technical background, I can’t recommend The ARRL Handbook enough. I actually have the 2011 edition. I’ve read complaints that the new handbook doesn’t teach enough about analog electronics. That may be the case for folks with a deep understanding, but for us rf noobs, it’s plenty rich. If you’re new to electronics, the first few chapters are like a crash course in electronics theory. The next few chapters do a deep dive (by my standards) into all aspects of RF electronics. So instead of building things, I’ve been trying to plow through some heavy reading to get up to speed.
January 31, 2012
Lots of Little Radio Projects
I’ve recently done a lot of small but interesting projects. I should probably break each out into its own small article, but I’m lazy, so you get to see a mishmash.
Radio related projects
January 23, 2012
LC Meter Update and Source
I finally cleaned up the source code from my rendition of the LC Meter. Here s the source. Here is a modified freq counter library which works with my Arduino Mega2560. The original frequency counter library is here. If you have a mega1280, the library may not work without similar modifications that I made for the 2560. The AVR_MEGA1280 is lumped in with the other arduino flavors in the original library. I don’t have a mega1280 to test with so I didn’t make changes to it.
January 15, 2012
The Hunt for a Good Compromise Antenna
I’ve been tinkering with my homebrew slinky antenna and my G5RV lite which I picked up and Ham Radio Outlet. I’ve decided to abandon the slinky dipole. It will easily tune to everything from 80 meters to 6 meters, but there is always a lot of noise compared to the G5RV. Due to the fact that there are no trees on our lot and the fact that I don’t want questions from the neighbors, the highest I’ll be able to get an antenna is about 25 feet, the height of the house.
What shall I do for an antenna?