Cobwebb success

After what seems like a lifetime in the attic the Cobwebb ventured outside for the Easter weekend. What a weekend as well.

I put the little antenna up on the telescopic pole about the same height and the top of the Hustler 6-btv (in the background) and spent a few minutes tuning into various stations then dashing in and out of the house to swap the feeder over between the two antennas. Several dashes later and the freezing cold east wind finally kept me in doors just as 2 VK stations appeared on the cluster. At the time I was on the vertical and paid little attention to them as experience tells me that they wouldn't be 'in range' with my 100w. Especially as I was at home in the st bees dip which usually strips rf out of the ether. I tuned to their operating frequency and was met with stoney silence, as expected.

Out of curiosity I did one last switch and the first station was a real 5 & 9. A few calls later and we managed my first qso with a vk. A few minutes later I bagged my second. Within a few hours I managed 7 new countries in between walking the dog and other family stuff. I can safely say that I will be making a more rugged version of the single wire Cobwebb and retiring the vertical.

Now the bands have returned to their usual quieter state it was certainly a good weekend to be on the radio



 

All it needs is a title

I found this on a scrap piece of paper at the club last night. Being a bit thick and not knowing what it was for certain I asked a few people and the response was fairly consistent.

‘Its a…errr…y’know…..that you know used to do as kits for err’

Obviously I wasn’t the only one who was a little stuck. Well I don’t know what it is exactly, but I can have a few guesses – I’ll nail my colours to the mast and suggest it is a current meter of sorts. Anyone else care to join in the guesswork with more confidence? It took me long enough to find out what brass treblet tube is!

Ultimate QRSS kit

The kit building is carrying on at my garage before the cold weather comes and means that it'll be less than appealing to go in there. This time it is a seemingly simple kit from Hans Summers, G0UPL called the Ultimate QRSS kit. Ultimate because presumably the kit does more than QRSS, however the kit is essentially a QRP (~150mW) beacon transmitter for QRSS and other modes, the attraction for me is that it also generates the tones for WSPR and as well as offering the QRP transmitter it also has the ability to generate just the audio for use with another transceiver. I was drawn to it because it offers the opportunity for a little bit of experimentation. Although things haven’t quite gone as smoothly as I’d hoped for.

The list of features for such a price is quite impressive. This is taken directly from Hans Summers' website (http://www.hanssummers.com/qrsskitmm.html). Which is well worth a visit if not for this kit.

The kit supports the following modes:

- QRSS mode (plain on/off keyed slow CW)

- FSK/CW mode (frequency shift keyed slow CW)

- DFCW mode (dual frequency CW)

- WSPR mode (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter)

- Slow-Hellschreiber (frequency shifted slow-Hell)

- Full-speed Hellshreiber

- Half-speed ("DX") Hellshreiber

- CW (plain CW)

- Customisable FSK patterns

Other features:

- 24-character LCD + two-button user interface

- User-programmable (callsign, message, speed, FSK, mode, etc.), settings stored in EEPROM

- GPS interface, for locking the frequency in slow-speed modes

- On-chip generation of WSPR encoded message (no PC required)

- WSPR maidenhead locator can be generated from GPS-derived latitude/longitude

- Selectable “frame” size, for stacked QRSS reception

- Plain CW callsign identifier at selectable interval

- Produces 150mW RF output, or AF output for driving an SSB transceiver

- Higher output power by additional PA transistor and/or higher PA supply voltage

My 30m version has been sat on the shelf whilst the good weather (ahem!) was continuing. This came to head over the weekend when I warmed up the soldering iron and started piecing it all together. The kit took a few hours to build and I would image that a skilled builder would have it all together much quicker than I could with the excellent instructions.

Unfortunately on powering up things haven't exactly gone according to plan. It only seems to power when it fancies it and certainly doesn't generate the tones as you might expect although I am receiving a carrier roughly in the right area. The other small issue is that the LED doesn’t appear to do anything visual, this may be a design feature but seems a little bit odd to me.

All these faults are almost certainly a result of my work, not the kit although it didn't help having to scratch off the solder mask from the coil connections. I think the fault finding will take longer than the building in this instance but with a bit of luck it will involve some learning and there is no harm in that.

Still where's the fun in it working first time?

Digital SWR meter final adjustments

Here's the finished digital SWR and power meter kit from Radio Kits that is being used by the Workington Amateur Radio Club as a bit of soldering and coil winding practice. Not the poor lining up of the LCD screen. Shame really as the soldering was one of my better bits and that's going to be covered up. All in all a nice kit to put together, I'm no soldering super star and I took my time so instead of it bring an 'evening' kit it I'd more like a 'weekender'.

The case of the ……

Well Dr Watson, its wobbly metal.

Enough of the Tom Foolery and down to the serious business of an issue that must be fairly common. Drilling larger diameter holes in flexible metal sheet generally found on hobby cases. Just in case you were wondering though Tom Fool (aka Tom Skelton) is apparently a ghost of a Jester at our local castle, Muncaster so here's hoping he's had plenty of opportunity to wander round the house and grounds with odd shaped holes in his thin sheet metal parts.

A lot of trouble I have with when its time to put a project in a case is that the 16mm hole needed for an SO239 for example causes me no end of trouble. I have tried a number of different ways to make the holes without giving a figure of 8 or elongated hole. Step drills tend to give slightly better results that piloting and increasing the bit size. I have found that the latter can easily end up with a poor hole if any vibration is imparted into the case.

So what's the answer, well, I just don't know. Punching would seem to be a better solution as would routing the holes but in the case of pre folded sheet I'm sure this isn't too practical. I'm wondering if people have had better results with other ways of making these holes.

Radio Kits Digital SWR kit

A month or so ago I suggested that the Workington radio club, MX0WRC ought to have a build night. Guess who ended up organising one?

Well after a few emails and raising of cheque which need multiple signatories I ordered 10 digital SWR and power meters from Radio Kits. The kit is reasonably priced and seemed of a complex enough nature to be challenging to the more novice club members but not too hard. Specifically there are no SMD's so hopefully everyone could have a go and build one up.

I thought it best to build one myself before the first evening but holidays, the dreaded lergy and getting back to work all got in the way and I didn't manage to get started on mine until a couple of nights ago. Not the greatest preparation. The kit is supplied in a number of bags and there are 2 PCB's to construct, although they are supplied as a single one which has provision to be 'snapped' in the right place. The general idea is to work your way through the bags which are in a nice and simple logical sequence.

Instructions are also really good for the novice, and I think this is where the kit is aimed. I was talking to some of the club members about getting these kits and one confessed to having 6 of them! SWR meters I mean. The instructions are far more than build notes as they explain the kit thoroughly and the component parts and offer advice for the trickier to identify components, winding coils, placement etc.

My kit will be done over a couple of evenings so it fits in with the other commitments I have and so far I'm progressing nicely. Just keep the comments on my build standard to yourself ;-)

Kits for the club

Monday night was club night

I must have been a bit tired from the long bike ride I did at the weekend but I offered to run a construction evening based on a simple kit. This was really to help build confidence in soldering and making 'stuff' that might be handy for the up and coming ham's shack.

Anyone who knows me will know that I can build a kit but can't design a circuit for toffee. So the hunt for a suitable kit began, Julian, G4ILO happened to mention at nerly the same time that a QRSS TX is available through Hans Summers which looks like a cheap and simple one to go for and a company called radio kits do a simple needle based SWR kit or a digital one.

The crucial thing is to be able to talk around the principle of operation as well as the construction otherwise the exercise is missing a trick. I'll be ordering the bits very shortly and making sure I know they work long before I let myself in for an overly complicated explanation to a bunch of blank faces. Especially if they are wielding soldering irons.

Price is obviously an issue as the club has members with a variety of incomes, but if there are other kits about that could be made up. I would really like to hear of an 4m FM TXRX’s that can be built. For some reason most of the members have an obsession with that band. Otherwise its a suitable SSB HF rig for a long term project. First off though is the easy one. Famous last words?

B&Q Beam update

I set the challenge to build a cheap and effective 2m 3ele beam at the club last week and it looks like we'll get a few people giving it a go. Whilst it certainly isn't going to be a particularly scientific set of tests I hope the members will get something out of it. I plan on following it up with a run through some of the antenna modelling software that is available.

Judging will take place on the 2nd July to coincide with the next club meeting. I'm quite looking forward to seeing how inventive people will be.

By all means use the info in the club post if you want to have a go yourself. The maths may be a bit sketchy but bear in mind it was done to fit a commercially available design that I'll be using as the 'control'.

B&Q Beam

I’ve committed to ‘presenting’ the B&Q beam to the club in a couple of weeks so I better get on making it. The idea is one that has been done a few hundred if not thousand times over. Give some new / inexperienced hams the opportunity to build a perfectly adequate 3 element beam for 2m from parts found at a local hardware shop. In the UK B&Q is just about everywhere and it supplies just about everything, apart from the thing you want, generally.

Seriously the design is taken from any of your favourite calculators. I have found that they vary slightly against the original maths but I know my Sotabeam works very well so that’s a good starting point for dimensions.

Costs to date are in the region of a few quid but by far the most expensive parts are the nylon bolts used to hold the elements. I’ve bought a bunch so I’ll have a few attempts at drilling straight through the nylon without heating it up too much.

Microcode built

After only a total of about 2 hours construction time I've completed the Microcode kit. Tested it and powered it up, and I'm happy to say that it ran first time. I had to adjust the contrast on the screen to get the characters up which gave me a little fright but all seems to be working ok.

So far I haven't decided on how I'm going to box it up as something like a hammond extruded case will look a bit over the top and the sizes are not quite there. Maybe a sweet tin or something like that.

I had a small problem with the kit being short of 1 resisitor and no spare of that value in the spares box. But within a day I had one and a spare from Ron at Cumbria designs. Excellent service. I will be setting up the kit over the next few days, we have visitors this weekend so it'll be next week I actually get to do the fettling but so far the construction was a simple affair. The instructions were excellent with a good explanation as to how the circuit works, which is good for me as I'm on a steep learning curve with these things. Hopefully one day I'll de designing my own circuits, but for the time being making these kits is fun and simplified by the quality of documentation that comes with it.

I think I'll enjoy using this gizmo and am very glad that it worked first time. Does your homebrew confidence the world of good.

Here's a little bit of video to show you. The Yaesu VX3 has a cw training function that sews out random letter and numbers at a preset speed. The Micorcode hasn't been adjusted at all, this is as built so treat it as a bench test.

[youtube]vufscix0cJY[/youtube]

Down load it Microcode build

Alternatively its onYou tube Here

Cumbria Designs Microcode

Having made the two softrock hf-lite kits and thoroughly enjoyed the building process, I looked for another 'thing' to build.  I have had a PIC basic book for a while and one of the projects was a morse reader, so pricing up the parts from Farnell etc I also came across the Microcode from Cumbria Designs. Oddly enough the sum of the parts needed to build a PIC based reader from scratch was more than buying a kit.

Image from Cumbria Designs Website (www.cumbriadesigns.co.uk)

I did want to build up the reader from scratch and do the programming myself as I have just about managed to 'program' the thermostat before. But the temptation to build the kit was too much. It arrived the other day but what with visitors and other commitments I didn't manage to do anything with it.

Last night I went through to documents and took a few piccies for my reference. Below is the 'unboxing', I'll take a few more as I go through the kit



The kit looks simple enough for me to build and challenging enough for me to get some learning, so I'm looking forward to getting the soldering iron out.