BLT Kit arrived. August 28, 2007
Posted by Thor in portable, projects, qrp.add a comment
Well, the BLT kit finally arrived yesterday. Yippee! I did a parts inventory last night, and found some discrepancies from what the documentation says should be there.
- R4=1 K ohm 1/4 Watt resister. Received a 410 ohm resistor.
- 4 rubber feet. Missing.
- 8 1/4″ x 4-40 undercut flathead screws. Missing. But, I think this is due to there being a different enclosure than shown in the docs.
A couple of other gotchas:
- The enclosure is different from that pictured in the documentation. It is a little dirty and is scratched from the bending process.
- The PCB has “hair” – fiberglass fibers at least an 1/8th inch long – along the edges. It needs to be sanded off.
A good plus:
- The extra parts are included and the enclosure is already drilled for the “mod” that adds the ability to use a coax feed line or a balanced line antenna, and not just a balanced line feed. Great! I was planning on doing this mod anyway.
It turns out that aside from the missing rubber feet, I do have all of the appropriate parts. Here’s what Doug said in his email to me:
Thor, the parts list has not been updated to match the new enclosure. The 70 ohm resistor is an improvement over the 1K as it makes the LED righter and easier to see.
By the way, the price is going to go up on the kit soon due to the improvements and additions of the switch and the extra BNC. Also the new case is bigger and easier to work with. Please let me know what you thin of the changes.
Thanks Doug
As for the case, I think I’ll paint it anyway, and I can easily find appropriate rubber feet locally. And if I didn’t paint it, it would probably get pretty beat up looking in time anyway, since I don’t exactly use kid gloves with portable gear. I look forward to getting this kit built and to put it to use. Updates to follow.
Signal Electric – Fundamentals of Wireless Telegraphy August 27, 2007
Posted by Thor in keys.add a comment
I purchased my Signal Electric R-68 Wireless Practice Set back in 1994 or 1995 at an estate sale. It still had the top of the original box, and the booklet that came with the key. Following are scanned images of the booklet. Clicking on each image ought to take you to a larger version, but be aware that some of those larger images are more than 2 megabyts, and could be pretty slow to display if you are using a dial-up internet connection.
To see the entire booklet, see this page.
Still no BLT August 26, 2007
Posted by Thor in qrp, station.add a comment
I’ve still not received the BLT kit from Hendricks QRP Kits, and I’m getting aggravated. I sent Doug an email a week ago, and heard back on the 17th with “Hopefully on Monday. Thanks for your patience.” The weeks gone, with nothing in the mail so far.
Rock Mite 40 Complete August 22, 2007
Posted by Thor in portable, projects, qrp.6 comments
I’ve finally gotten around to completing the Rock-Mite 40 transceiver kit. It was fun to put together, in spite of my problems with my shaking hands and the difficulty it causes with putting components and wires on the board and connectors. Below are a few photos:
The RM board is fully “stuffed”, waiting for wires.
In this picture of the RM at board level, you can see that I’ve used SIP sockets as sockets for the crystals, allowing me to change out the crystals with 7.040 MHz crystals, which are for the other 40meter QRP calling frequency.
Another board level close-up.
Here some of the wires have been added. The crystals have been removed, and you can clearly see the SIP sockets at lower left and upper right on the board.
To fit the FCC’s newer (June 2004) spurious emission requirement, a 150pF cap and a 3.3 uH RF choke should be installed in series between the center conductor of the antenna connector and the board. The RF choke lead would not fit through the through-hole on the board, so I soldered it directly to the antenna connector, and put the capacitor on the board. The antenna connector and the caps position on the board are close enough that the leads of the choke and capacitor can be soldered directly together with out using the coax. Eventually, I ended up breaking the lead off of the choke, and since I don’t have a replacement I removed it and the cap and used coax to connect the board to the antenna connector. I’ll put the choke and cap back on when I can.
It’s a tight fit with the board and connectors all wired and installed in the Mighty Box enclosure. Here you can see that the leads for the two crystals (lower left and upper right) needed to be bent over so that the crystals would fit. If they had been soldered directly to the board instead of using sockets, they would probably have been fine standing up straight.
Ready for the bottom cover to be screwed into place.
Front view of the completed RockMite. Left to right, audio gain, switch, phones. The switch is used to toggle off-set frequency and control the internal keyer.
Rear view of the completed RockMite. Left to right: key, antenna, power.
If/when I get a clear label cartridge for my Brother P-Touch labeler, I will add labels to the RM case.
Now, to make some contacts!
Flea-market morse key August 10, 2007
Posted by Thor in keys.7 comments
A while back, last summer I think, my xyl (my wife) found an old straight key at a flea market. Since I was not active with ham radio at the time, the key got put into the box with my other keys and some other parts of my station. Then I forgot about it.
A few days ago I started getting some of those things out again, and in particular I was looking for my Nye Viking Master Key and my HeathKit code practice oscillator. I was surprised to find this dirty, old key, and I couldn’t remember right away where it came from. As you can see from the pictures, it is quite dirty, and looks like it will take some elbow grease to restore, but before I do that, I’d like to know if it’s worth the trouble. It looks like it might be, but I have no idea what kind of key this is. If you recognize this key and can tell me anything about it, leave a comment!
Rock Mite inventory update August 10, 2007
Posted by Thor in projects.add a comment
I noted before that I sent an email to Dave at Small Wonder Labs about the missing pieces. He did reply a couple of days ago, so I guess I was wrong about his being gone for awhile. Thank goodness! Anyway, he said that he’d get the parts out to me right away.
Thank you, Capt. Scott Hedberg, AD7MI/YI9MI August 8, 2007
Posted by Thor in Uncategorized.add a comment
Checking my email this morning, I was quite surprised to see an email from someone that I don’t know, and not SPAM; this doesn’t happen often, but it’s kind of fun. Anyway, the note was from Capt. Scott Hedberg, AD7MI/YI9MI. Scott – I’ll take the liberty of calling him by his first name – is currently stationed in Iraq. Here is his note (hope you don’t mind Scott!):
Thor,
I’ve been reading your blog – I really enjoy your postings. Although my present duty station hasn’t allowed me to operate for a while, I’m able to stay engaged in amateur radio due to great blogs like yours.
Please keep up the good work!
73 Scott AD7MI/YI9MI
Taji, Iraq
US Army
Double surprise. My blogs (this one and “mind? what mind?“) were created strictly for personal consumption, and possibly my families’ – my mother, for example, is a ham, KE7CM/1 – and I never expected that anyone would bother reading them.
Looking Scott up on QRZcom, I see that his home QTH is Hampton, VA, and I followed the link to his blog site, AD7MI – spinning & grinning. His blog is well put together and interesting, worth taking a look at.
So, thank you, Capt. Scott Hedberg, for reading this blog and for your very kind comment. It’s in my prayers that you and all of your men and women serve out your tours and make it home safely.
73 Scott.
Rock Mite inventory August 7, 2007
Posted by Thor in projects.add a comment
I finally got around to inventorying the parts for the Rock Mite kit this evening. I cleaned up the area that I am going to work at, which is a corner of a desk – not much room. I also found my lamp/magnifier, and organized my tool kits and some other items.
The Rock Mite kit is missing a couple of items:
- two 8-pin sockets
- one 47uF electrolytic cap, low-profile case. Received a 220uF cap instead.
I sent Dave at Small Wonder Labs an email, but I seem to remember that he was going to be away for a bit. I might already have the 8-pin sockets, and I can probably get the low-profile locally, so I won’t wait for Dave to get back.
BLT Delayed August 3, 2007
Posted by Thor in portable, qrp.add a comment
I’m bummed. I ordered the BLT (Balanced Line Tuner) from Hendrick’s QRP Kits five or six days ago, but I didn’t notice that they would be closed until August 10th. Oh well, another couple of weeks wont kill me… will it?
One BIG antenna August 3, 2007
Posted by Thor in antennas, station.1 comment so far
I’m not sure where this message originated, but I received it via the Flying Pigs QRP Clubs email reflector.
The piggy that forwarded this asks: “So…. if I hook my QRP rig to this thing… does it still count as QRP?”
And your neighbors think YOU have a big antenna! Many of you remember hearing the signals that used to come out of Russia that hams “lovingly” called the “woodpecker”. During the 60s and 70s, this over the horizon radar, which was aimed over the north pole to watch for any US missile launches, made quite a racket on the ham bands. Now, here’s your chance to take a look at the antenna that was used, which was fed by several 75KW transmitters.
