Monday 20 April 2020
Wednesday 15 April 2020
Change of Pace. Lets try operating cw.
Decided to change things up and actually do some operating instead of building.
A few of local area hams got together the other night and dusted off older QRP CW rigs and see what happens. In my case I used an all homebrew station.
My setup consisted of an all hb tuner and audio filter. The keyer and rig are kits. Still hb in my eyes.
CW was rusty, as expected but I did well enough that the Reverse Beacon Network picked up my 2 watts. My signal was heard state side in 1, 8 , and 9 areas. But the band was very busy and was barely heard at times locally. Need a little more power for the ground wave stuff.
Anyway it was fun and will give it another go but I'll likely use my KX3instead.
A few of local area hams got together the other night and dusted off older QRP CW rigs and see what happens. In my case I used an all homebrew station.
My setup consisted of an all hb tuner and audio filter. The keyer and rig are kits. Still hb in my eyes.
CW was rusty, as expected but I did well enough that the Reverse Beacon Network picked up my 2 watts. My signal was heard state side in 1, 8 , and 9 areas. But the band was very busy and was barely heard at times locally. Need a little more power for the ground wave stuff.
Anyway it was fun and will give it another go but I'll likely use my KX3instead.
Thursday 9 April 2020
Signal Generator Control Project
Looking for a simple project to work on, I decided to revisit the signal generator project that I did as part of the Peel Amateur Radio HB Group. That build took place several months ago and at the time the specs for the project did not include any control over the output voltage levels. I was always going to address that issue and this seemed to be the perfect time to do so.
I built a step attenuator, highlighted in 2 previous posts, and quite some time ago I experimented with the AD8307 logarithmic amplifier chip and have a couple of prototype circuits for measuring low power signals sitting around in the junk box. I have the prototype SigGen as well the Arduino board I used for those experiments was still in one piece with the original program. So, why not put all the pieces together and see what happens.
A quick assembly of the various boards and run through shows some promise but its obvious some work to optimize the code will be necessary. Another issue that has become a bit obvious is how to assemble all this in under one box.
The SigGen uses a Nano and I'm wondering if I can fit the code for the 8307 into that program and that way I can eliminate an Arduino. Space is tight in the Nano but the 8307 code is not huge. Time will tell.
From left to right, the SigGen, Step Attenuator, AD8307 board, and the Arduino running the RF measurement program.
I built a step attenuator, highlighted in 2 previous posts, and quite some time ago I experimented with the AD8307 logarithmic amplifier chip and have a couple of prototype circuits for measuring low power signals sitting around in the junk box. I have the prototype SigGen as well the Arduino board I used for those experiments was still in one piece with the original program. So, why not put all the pieces together and see what happens.
A quick assembly of the various boards and run through shows some promise but its obvious some work to optimize the code will be necessary. Another issue that has become a bit obvious is how to assemble all this in under one box.
The SigGen uses a Nano and I'm wondering if I can fit the code for the 8307 into that program and that way I can eliminate an Arduino. Space is tight in the Nano but the 8307 code is not huge. Time will tell.
From left to right, the SigGen, Step Attenuator, AD8307 board, and the Arduino running the RF measurement program.
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