Sorry for the lack of updates this week, I’ve been under the weather and haven’t accomplished anything other than dragging my sorry carcass to work. And that was a struggle. Anyway, I found something that might interest you math and computer geeks out there. This website, called Project Euler, presents a series of mathematical challenges… Read More Project Euler
Today is our housewarming party, so that means chores, chores, and more chores for me. I figured I could still have a little ham radio fun by firing up WSPR and letting it run while I took care of stuff around the house. I didn’t really expect it, but my little 1 watt signal to… Read More 1 Watt to VK-land
Someone’s getting a bit greedy.
This is a reply that I wrote in response to a thread on the “old” QRP-L regarding the dying of ham radio in the US. The post that I was replying to lamented the instant gratification culture that we have developed in the country. I felt that I should stick my reply here on the… Read More Reflections
This last weekend Jennifer left town for a business trip, so Baxter and I are currently own our own as bachelors. So I got the chance to participate in the monthly SKCC Weekend Sprint without too many interruptions and “honey do” items. Last month was my first try at WES, and I pretty much just… Read More Sophomore Weekend Sprint
I finally got a few days of decent sleep (decent meaning more than 4 hours), so I had a little energy to work on the simple DC transceiver. A few days ago, I got the remainder of the audio chain working. The emitter follower on one of the outputs of the differential mixer was yanked,… Read More Progress is Made
I don’t know if the guy who created this is a ham (he does say he’s an engineer), but it’s a neat application of some old-school technology. He uses a PIC 12F510 to output a Hellschreiber modulated square wave right to his PC’s sound card line in port. I really get a kick out of… Read More A Hellschreiber Clock!
Yes, its a post about another simple, low-performing direct conversion receiver. However, I think that this one is slightly unique. I was inspired to give this a try based on the Flea minimalist transceiver that was introduced on the EMRFD Yahoo group. These little rigs are fun to build in an evening, but just how… Read More Yet Another DC Receiver
Like I don’t have enough ham radio interests to keep me busy, but sometimes I have the attention span of a hummingbird and want to try new things that catch my eye. Such was the case when I saw VK2TPM’s blog post about getting WSPR up and running on his Ubuntu Intrepid box (thanks for… Read More Shhh…WSPR…
Here’s quick update to post the schematic of the code practice oscillator that I mentioned previously. As you can see, I just paired a twin-T sine wave oscillator with a buffer amp that feeds directly into headphones. The twin-T provides plenty of voltage, so the buffer is all we need to provide enough current to… Read More Preliminary CPO Schematic