Contents :

A collection of thoughts, and my notes about experiments and ideas, technical or otherwise, connected to Amateur Radio, Satellite working and monitoring and other electronics.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

New kits arrived

It took a while, but I now have "a few" kits to build.

Some SoftRock II kits, different bands, each can be made directly for 160,80,40,30 or 20m, all components in the kit. Some SMD soldering necessary, but should be possible, even with my eyes.

Some "Funkamateur" single frequency kits, among those a 10.7MHz kit to connect to my VHF-UHF RX (R7000, possibly AR-8600).
Two kits for 9MHz, one will be modified for use on 10MHz

the other 9MHz might be made "wideband", so a multitude of LO signals could be used, possibly a Si570 synthesizer or the DDS60 kit

Two lower band kits, to be decided

The FA wideband SDR TRX, will need a PA and a programmable LO, not yet ordered. Covering 1.7 - 30 MHz with preselection, so seems quite usable.

The "standard" 1W PA could probably easily be replaced by a home made solution, but I will see if I do not get to order the standard one at some stage. The local oscillator, the so-called FA-SY may be the way to go for full band coverage. A housing is also available, I may order that one, too.

Update :
The FA-SY oscillator has been ordered, along with a housing fit for the FA-SDR TRX
More Update :
The FA-SY kit and the housing have arrived

Lots of kits to build, not too much time, so let us see what comes up here.

The intention is to use some of the fixed frequency stuff for simultaneous WSPR and QRSS monitoring.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

600m WSPR at "Thor's Hammer"

Since I visited the QTH of OZ9QV last month I have been monitoring the WSPR reception there.

The WSPR receiver is of course the same as the one for QRSS, with WSPR running concurrently on the PC.

With the tiny indoor tuned multi turn loop (diameter 22cm) the following stations have now been received successfully on 600m .

PA0A, PA0O, G3XIZ, PE1GRL and EI0CF being 1225km from there.

For such a simple setup I am quite happy with the results, even though I know that improvements are certainly possible.