Even though I’ve been insanely busy with home life and running Etherkit, I felt like I needed to get out and do a bit of operating to get back in touch with that aspect of amateur radio. In the past few years, Dave W8NF has invited me to come up to the OTVARC Field Day… Read More Field Day 2012
I’ve got another grab-bag of miscellaneous news for this post, but I’m going to lead off with the big one: I’m going to be a presenter at the world’s preeminent QRP convention: Four Days In May 2012. The tentative topic for my presentation will be about the free and open source tools that I use… Read More Dayton Or Bust
The year is not starting out as well as I had hoped. Back during the beta test of the CC-20 I had set a goal to complete my revisions and be ready to sell production kits by 1 January 2012. Obviously that date has come and gone and I’m still not on the market. A… Read More Catching Up With Etherkit
This post is a bit late, but I wanted to be sure to document my first attempt at a SOTA activation and what I learned from it. The title is probably a bit harsh, but the eternal pessimist in me couldn’t help it. I decided to attempt a SOTA activation after seeing a lot of… Read More SOTA Fail on Clatskanie Mountain
Progress on CC-Series development proceeds at a reasonably-good clip right now. One of my last big hardware bugs to stamp out is some nasty microphonics that seem to be generated by the combination product detector/BFO. Today, I believe that I made some significant progress towards solving it and wanted to share what I learned. I’ve done a… Read More Single-Ended Mixers and Reverse Isolation
I don’t know exactly why, but I’ve had a bit of an obsession with the T32C DXpedition to Kiritimati since they got started a few weeks ago. Maybe because I found them easier to work than many of the DXpeditions that I’ve tried before. The fact that they are a very well-run operation has something… Read More Two Watts Across the Pacific
I’m happy to report that the second of four CC-20 beta kits is completed and working! Mikey, WB8ICN got his all finished up with no major problems and made a first QSO with N1WPU. It looks like he made a nice custom enclosure out of some very sturdy copper clad. Very, very nice! Please click… Read More Another CC-20 Lives
Here it is, the first CC-Series beta unit completed by someone other than me! As is obvious by glancing at the photos, Dave AA7EE has done a magnificent job of assembling the CC-20, as well as creating a custom enclosure for the radio out of red copper clad using the WA4MNT technique. There’s really not… Read More The First Wild Beta
No earth-shattering news to report on the blog, but a few little things to mention (hence the “junkbox” title). The CC-20 Beta 1 test is proceeding pretty much as planned. As of tonight, AA7EE has his receiver up and running now and a couple of the others are close behind. I’m eagerly awaiting the results… Read More Junkbox
I’ll admit there were times when I thought I might never get this thing working, but dogged persistence in the face of frustration will sometimes get the job done. Failure to accept the mushy and hum-ridden audio finally led me to crack the tough nut. Today, I finally slew the new CC-20 beta dragon. Without getting into… Read More The CC-20 Lives