Tag Archives: HF

Activities, Education and Training, General, Homebrewing, On The Air, Space

Amateur Radio at MakeIt Labs

On Saturday, January 28th the Nashua Area Radio Club (Nashua ARC) will be hosting a special event for Interested kids, parents, and friends in the community about the joy of amateur radio at MakeIt Labs in Nashua from 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. You may drop in at any time and stay as long as you like to participate! Among our activities, you can:

Get-On-The-Air Station (GOTA)

Ham Radio GOTA StationThis is amateur radio at its best and what it’s known for! We invite you to get on the air and make a contact (we call them QSO’s — pronounced: cue-so) somewhere in the world! You might be able to make a new friend in Germany or even Japan! Making contacts sits at the heart of amateur radio and is an activity that brings people together. So don’t be shy, step up, and hit the push-to-talk button!

Satellite Station Display

AMSAT LogoThe Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) began in 1969 to foster amateur radio participation in space research and communication. Currently, AMSAT groups help advance the state of the art in space science, space education, and space technology. Come learn about what components go into constructing a station capable of contacting a satellite and what antennas, and smart phone apps, operators use to keep a pulse on the satellite location.

Digital Amateur Television (DATV)

DATV Transceiver RackNot only are amateur radio operators granted privileges to transmit speech, but we also can send fast-scan data such as TV signals! Many operators have experimented with how to homebrew their own fast-scan TV stations, and our club president Fred (AB1OC) and our member Skip (K1NKR) have chosen to use construct a station which uses a Raspberry Pi (RPi) with an Arduino shield to sit at the heart of the transceiver. The RPi is the brains of the TV which runs Linux and among other things is responsible for sequencing, transmit/receive control, automatic VSWR monitoring, and a touch-screen controlling interface to configure and operate the system. Learn about what it takes to build and operate one of these stations. We may even be able to make a contact! More information can be found at https://stationproject.wordpress.com/category/amateur-television/.

Kit Building with Nashua ARC

Oscilloscope KitThe Nashua ARC holds kit-building nights were both inexperienced and experienced members homebrew in a relaxed, learning environment. In the past, we have built Pixie QRP (low-wattage) kits transmitting Morse Code on the 40m amateur band. But, on February 18 from 1 – 5 pm, First Church in Nashua, Nauss Hall, we will build the digital oscilloscope kit DSO138 (shown to left). This kit comes with a clear acrylic case to protect it, build instructions, and among its specs has a 1 Msps sampling rate, 12-bit accuracy, 200 kHz bandwidth (good for audio signals), capable of freezing the waveform display, and comes with a 1Hz / 3.3V test source. We invite you to join us and will bring some kits with us. More info can be found on our website at https://www.n1fd.org/2016/03/27/inexpensive-diy-digital-oscilloscope-kit/.

We hope you will join us for our event! Please bring friends, family, but most importantly we want you to have fun and enjoy this hobby with us!!

Contact Information

Brian Smigielski (AB1ZO): [email protected]
Jamey Finchum (KC1ENX): [email protected]

Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air, Youth Activities

ARRL Kids Day on the Air

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) operating on 20 meters during Kids DayConnor (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 frienAbby (AB1BY) operating on Kids Day with her two friendsds – 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 weatherEveryone had a great time during Kids Day, 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!

 

Kids Day FunMark 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.

 

CW and QRP, Featured, General, Homebrewing, Newsletter, Station Equipment

First Homebrew Contact on my Scratch Built BitX20 SSB Transceiver

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.

BitX20 First Contact QSL
Thank you, Josh K1JOG for the contact!

If you are interested in scratch building this rig you can follow the photo link  below:

BitX20 Homebrewed Transceiver
BitX by Ashhar Farhan, VU2ESE

Ashhar Farhan also sells a BitX40 at http://www.hfsigs.com/

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:

BitX20 Mic amp on the left LM386 audio amp on the right
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.

BitX20 Balanced Modulator
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!

BitX 10 MHz crystal filter
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.

BitX20 Mixer circuit
Mixer circuit

The mixer circuit is shown here with some coax to the left that is from the VFO.

BitX20 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.

BitX20 Bandpass Filter
Band Pass Filter by Pete N6QW

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.

BitX20 Power Amplifier
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”.

73,

Mike,  AB1YK

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide