I got a few pleasant surprises this weekend regarding ham homebrewing websites. First off, I received a very nice e-mail from Jonathan, KB1KIX. He stumbled upon my documentation for the Willamette transceiver (AKA the qrp-l.org Group Project), and took the time to do a very nice write-up about it on his blog. There’s a lot… Read More New Homebrewing Finds on the Web
Well, I’ve pretty much put the finishing touches on my secret QRP project for a well-known QRP club. The beta testers are currently working on building it, and hopefully the club can make an announcement about the kit fairly soon. It’s not a very complicated circuit, but it’s somewhat novel and has a bit of… Read More Back from the Bunker
Last week, I was informed that everyone in our company would be receiving a temporary (but indefinite) 10% reduction in pay. To make matters worse, it looks like we will be taking more mandatory shutdown days in the current quarter; we’ve got five coming up over the next few months. This is also another open-ended… Read More Watch This Space
As I mentioned in a previous post, I did the calculations to change the AF filter in the Willamette from a low-pass filter with a 3.3 kHz cutoff to a peaked low-pass filter with a cutoff frequency nearer to 1 kHz. I finally got around to implementing the mod last night and got a chance… Read More Willamette AF Filter Mod
I finally got the proper binocular ferrite cores that I needed to build the W8DIZ 5 watt amp correctly. You can see my previous post on this amplifier here. In my last post, I noted that I was seeing some strangeness in the drive level circuitry. I found that I had a very bad connection… Read More W8DIZ 5 Watt CW Amplifier Analysis
A few days ago, W8DIZ made a post on qrp-l.org announcing a new addition to his RF Toolkits line. This one is a 5 watt CW amplifier using a push-pull 2SC5739 pair as the PA (my new favorite full QRP gallon transistor). I built my own version of the circuit using parts that I had… Read More W8DIZ 5 Watt CW Amplifier
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
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
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…
This weekend, two of the first wave of Willamette builders posted some photos of their completed rigs to the qrp-l.org mailing list. I present to you some of these great pictures with the permission of the builders. First up is the excellent work of Chris Howard, W0EP. Chris placed his finshed rig in a very… Read More Some Beautiful Builds