BLT Construction September 6, 2007
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Well, I finally got around to completing the BLT – Balanced Line Tuner. It’s not just a balanced line tuner though; it now will tune a coax-fed antenna, and a random-wire antenna, as well as a balanced-line antenna. It was pretty simple to put together, although I had trouble a couple of times, caused by my shakiness. Following are some photos of the building process.
Tinning the PC Board
T1 core
T1 secondary winding (wind this first)
T1 completed
T1 mounted on PC Board
The completed PC Board
L1 wound on core. L2 & L3 are wound on the same core
Completed PC Board and Toroid (L1 L2 & L3)
Front panel connectors
Rear panel connectors
Wiring the panels
Completed. Front view. Crappy paint job.
BLT completed. Rear panel. Crappy paint job.
BLT Kit arrived. August 28, 2007
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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.
Still no BLT August 26, 2007
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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
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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!
BLT Delayed August 3, 2007
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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?
Rock-Mite update July 30, 2007
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The Rock-Mite transceiver kit that I ordered arrived in today’s post. I’m anxious to get it built and to make my first QSO (contact) with it. I would have built it tonight, but I’m out of solder, and need to go shopping for a few things.
Speaking of shopping, I ordered a BLT kit tonight. No, not the kind you make with bacon, but the tuner used to tune balanced line antennas.
So, my portable & QRP rig will be made up of the Rock-Mite, a BLT, a doublet antenna and, if I can find one locally, a 7 amp-hour 12 volt battery.
The Mity Box, mighty fast July 23, 2007
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Very fast service from American Morse Equipment. I ordered the “Mity Box” enclosure for the “Rock-Mite” radio from them on Friday, and it arrived with today’s mail. It’s a beautiful little enclosure, CNC milled out of an aircraft aluminum billet, and anodized blue. All the holes for connections and controls are pre-drilled; it’s completely ready to mount the board and chassis-mount components.
On order July 20, 2007
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I ordered a few items today:
- Replacement parts for my broken Butternut HF-9Vx antenna.
- Lower insulator (this is what broke, causing the antenna to lay over on the roof).
- Lower coil – damaged when antenna broke.
- Radio kit
- RockMite, single-band CW transciever (40-meter band), with optional connectors & controls, from Small Wonder Labs.
- MityBox, a custom enclosure for the RockMite, from American Morse Equipment.
Upcoming projects July 12, 2007
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These are some kit projects that I have, but have yet to build:
WA1FFL DDS VFO
James Hagerty, WA1FFL, described in the January 2001 issue of the ARRL’s QST magazine a DDS VFO. I was intrigued enough by the article that I ordered on of Jim’s partial parts kits. That was back in 2001, and I still have not done anything with it. Unfortunately, it’s designed for single-band use, so it will be somewhat limited in application, but some other really smart people have since worked on other implementations of a DDS VFO that are more flexible. In the mean time, this one ought to prove to be very educational. I need to dig it out and see if I ever got the “pieces/parts” that the kit didn’t include. I did pick up an LCD display back then; now to find it…
Tiny-Tornado
The following are the words of Brice Hornback KA8MAV, the founder of QRPp-I and designer of the 
Tiny-Tornado kit:
“This kit is based on an improved Pixie circuit. This type of circuit dates back to the famous Micro-80 micro-transceiver by Oleg Borodin – RV3GM. Although this board has seen significant changes, the layout of the first REV1a board was based on the original Pixie 2 layout by Doug Hendricks – KI6DS. The Tiny-Tornado is much improved over the Pixie 2 and has an improved circuit design and board layout (plated-through holes and ground plane) and is complete with a very detailed assembly manual, schematic, and operating instructions.”
There was a very short delay when I ordered the Tiny-Tornado because KA8MAV, Brice, needed to get all of the parts for all of the kits ordered and sorted, PCB boards prepared, and the completed kits shipped. That is not an overnight process.
Once again, it’s been several years since I ordered the Tiny-Tornado, and now that I think about it, I don’t remember if I ordered more than one… Originally, I was inspired by one of Brice’s photos of one of his radio’s installed into a small case with a PTO/VFO. I’ve got the tiny box, I’ve got the Tiny-Tornado, I’ve got the WA6OTP PTO/VFO kit too, but I want them to all to fit together with the 9-volt battery too… Now to build ‘em and cram ‘em together.
WA6OTP PTO/VFO
This Permeability Tuned Oscillator (PTO) Kit designed by James McNutt, WA6OTP will add a little flexibility to the radio kits that I’m experimenting with. It will tune over a wide range – 500 kc +. About 13 kc per revolution of the tuning dial. With this added to the FOXX-3, Pixie-2 or Tiny-Tornado, they won’t be “rock-bound” any longer. As you can see from the picture, the construction style is “Manhattan” style.
Pixie-2
“The $10.00 radio”. The Pixie-2 is a fully functioning QRPp transceiver which can be built for different bands – I’m building the 40-meter band version. The Pixie-2 is small enough that it could fit inside a tic-tacs box. I think I’ll put mine in something small, but big enough to hold a battery.
I actually have three of the Pixie-2’s for 40-meters, but I think I’ll probably do one of them on 20. The QRPp International club has put on an very basic “Elmer 001″ course, a beginners’ course in Amateur Radio kit building and operational theory, and the Pixie-2 radio is the core part of the course.
