On Saturday, January 7th the Nashua Area Radio Club participated in the ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air. Fred (AB1OC) and Anita (AB1QB) opened up their station for any youth that wanted to come and participate! We also had snap circuits available with help from Greg (W1TEN) and CW paddles for those who wanted to practice up on their Morse code.
Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with us as it was a snowy day with slippery road conditions. We had a couple of youth not able to make the event due to the weather, but we still had a few show and they were very enthusiastic!
Connor (KC1GGX) started the event off by operating on 20 meters and made several contacts. Despite having a little “mic fright” he warmed up nicely and didn’t want to share the mic when it was someone else’s turn!
Abby (AB1BY) stopped by and had two friends – Samay and Jaegen – from her Destination Imagination team with her. Abby got the ball rolling for her friends and showed them how to create a pile up – just have a young YL voice and the calls start coming! She then turned the mic over to Samay and Jaegen and helped them work through their first QSOs. They soon were comfortable with the phonetic alphabet and they had fun spelling their names during their QSOs.
Despite the weather, the kids had a great time and it was a lot of fun to see the youth in our club improve their operating skills and watch the new kids make their first contacts!
Mark you calendars for Sunday, June 18th when the next ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air takes place. I feel pretty comfortable saying there won’t be any snow… but, this is New England.
About a year ago I decided to build an SSB transceiver for making contacts with other amateur radio operators on the HF bands. I was given good advice from both Bill and Pete from the SolderSmoke Podcast to start out with a direct conversion receiver then go with the BitX20 as a first SSB rig. I am very happy that they gave me that advice and I would agree that the BitX is not a good first project.
After getting all the proper adjustments made and confirming proper operation with a dummy load it was time to put this rig on the air (I don’t need a case)! I tried calling CQ using SSB voice but no one came back. I then decided to add some relays and other modifications to allow digital modes.
On January 15, 2017, at 21:46z I answered a psk31 CQ from Josh K1JOG in Kissimmee, FL. Little did he know that he would be making history (maybe just for me) in my first home brew QSO. Below is his eQSL card to me.
The units he has built in India are almost ready to put on the air. You build the case/box or just go open board style! You can’t beat the $59 price for a rig!
Below are some photos of my project:
Mic amp on the left LM386 audio amp on the right
A good place to start is the Audio “end”. I built mine using perf prototype board. FYI the 10k ohm resistor on the mic amp needs to be 39k ohm for proper bias.
Balanced Modulator
On the balanced modulator, I used a mystery toroid core because I have a bunch of them and they did not cost much!
10 MHz crystal filter
In this photo, you can see some transmit and receive amplifiers and the crystal filter. I built some test equipment and used a frequency counter to make a matched set of crystals.
Mixer circuit
The mixer circuit is shown here with some coax to the left that is from the VFO.
Original VFO design on the left. Filtered SI5351 clock generator on the right
You can see the benefit of building small modules. With SMA connectors, I can quickly swap out the VFO “soul” of this rig! No more drift with the SI5351 chip! I ordered mine from Adafruit. I added a small LC filter to the output to make a nice sine wave. I am not sure it is needed.
Now I had trouble with the original band pass filter. I’m not sure why but a quick google search on 20m band pass filter and I found a replacement circuit on his website. When I told Pete about this he sent me a new updated design to try. My PTT relays are 5v so the small heatsink is for the voltage regulator. I also included diode protection for the replays.
Irf510 power amplifier
The IRF510 is more of a switch and not designed for linear RF amplification but it is cheap and works great for QRP. They have different bias requirements from one unit to the next. That is why you carefully set the bias level with a trim pot. The large heat sink was part of an old high power LED driver that died. I used T37-6 toroid cores for the low pass filter on the right. The 2nd relay was needed to prevent the output of the IRF510 feeding back into the original PTT switch and back into a nasty loop.
I am not sure if this rig will ever get a case or future modifications but I do know that I would like to see if I can make more contacts with it.
I would like to end this article with a quote I very much like from a video with Rev. George Dobbs, G3RJV
“Radio construction is rather like a pilgrimage where the journey is often more important than the destination”.
On Christmas morning, it always amazes me how the kids can rip the packaging off all their gifts in mere minutes. The smile on their faces and their pure joy and excitement makes it all worthwhile. What took months of planning, shopping, hiding, wrapping is over before you know it. As they say, you get much more out of giving than receiving.
As you might imagine, there is a parallel here to field day. Sure, you could just show up at Field Day on Saturday morning, and everything would be setup and ready to go. However, much of the value comes from all the strategy, planning, preparation and setup activities. Despite the large investment the club has made in towers, antennas, generator, etc., It takes a small army of volunteers to get this right.
This is my first year as field day chairman. Truth be told, I only attended my first Nashua Area RC field day last June, and was truly impressed. I was reluctant to volunteer last year, as I just didn’t quite know what I would be getting into. I suspect many of you are feeling the same way this year. Whatever the excuse; I haven’t been a ham long enough, don’t know if I can devote the time, I don’t know anything about field day, etc. Trust me, you can and will add value to this event. Like Uncle Sam used we say, we need you!
Now that it’s the new year, we are going to start having a regular series of meetings to plan for Field Day 2017. The first meeting will be centered around what we learned from field day last year. I’m looking for some early ideas about new things we can do to make field day more interesting and relevant for each of you. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] anytime with your ideas.
Some of the preliminary feedback I have received is tactical in nature. It includes the following:
Current Field Day electrical distribution setup
The Electrical distribution system needs help. The current system consists of a Honda ES-6500 Generator with 240v distribution lines to step-down transformers at the tents. The main distribution panel needs to be completely rebuilt and reduced in size. Additionally, the whole setup isn’t currently weatherproof. The existing distribution “cables” are single-conductor THHN wires taped together which certainly isn’t optimal. Ideally, we should start with a clean sheet of paper and rebuild this properly. Perhaps a small transfer switch so we can run two generators (so one can be serviced while still operating), with twist-lock plugs on the distribution cables and transformers, and proper SJOOW cable. This effort alone would exceed the club budget for field day, so we could use donations of time and materials.
The club owns a significant amount of coax cable. However, much of it is quite old and the connectors have seen better days. I will look to schedule a tech night to put on new connectors and weatherproof using head-shrink with adhesive-lined backing. We also need to make-up some short patch cables to connect to the club’s bandpass filters. We should also label all club cable with the club call. Finally, we need to determine the best strategy to coil up and store the coax without kinks.
The iron anchor stakes for the towers need to be modified to have a sharp point at one end. Someone with a grinder could do this in relatively short order. We could also benefit from having a large hammer drill on-site with a ground rod bit to drive them in.
We need to review the hardware and storage containers used to assemble the towers. There was a recommendation to use shoulder bolts that are smooth and unthreaded through the tower to prevent crushing. Also, many of the storage containers are cracked and need replacement. Need to inventory and rebuild these kits.
We have a trailer, affectionately referred to as BOB (the Big Orange Box) at the Nashua Wastewater Treatment Center. I understand this could use some reorganization. We need mount some brackets to the wall to get things up off the floor. Also, we should group each of the tower kits together.
So what should you expect from me? I will be looking to divide the work up into a series of teams and assign leads for each. The teams will include a site readiness team, electrical, tower and antenna construction, safety, transportation, food, and potentially others. Many hands make light work, and there’s something here for everyone.
The preparation begins now. Who said it can’t be Christmas in June? Let the excitement begin!
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Connor (KC1GGX) started the event off by operating on 20 meters and made several contacts. Despite having a little “mic fright” he warmed up nicely and didn’t want to share the mic when it was someone else’s turn!
ds – Samay and Jaegen – from her Destination Imagination team with her. Abby got the ball rolling for her friends and showed them how to create a pile up – just have a young YL voice and the calls start coming! She then turned the mic over to Samay and Jaegen and helped them work through their first QSOs. They soon were comfortable with the phonetic alphabet and they had fun spelling their names during their QSOs.
, the kids had a great time and it was a lot of fun to see the youth in our club improve their operating skills and watch the new kids make their first contacts!
Mark you calendars for Sunday, June 18th when the next ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air takes place. I feel pretty comfortable saying there won’t be any snow… but, this is New England.
