[HomeBrew] R U having FUN yet

[Stan Wilson]

One of the thrills of ham radio has always been to build something and
then see it come to life.   Recently it has become more difficult due to
lack of parts sources and basic operation and regulations requiring
better design equipment.    ARRL has not been much help with lack of
real building articles and almost total destruction of what use to be a
nice building manual the "Handbook".

 

However, there is still an area of this radio hobby that has been
created with PC and soundcards.    Weak signal communications.  And it
is an area  in which we can still homebrew equipment.    Stable
oscillators are required and simple transmitters.   One can build a
simple oscillator chose components carefully and bury the assembly in
the ground.   It works - there are many simple qrp xmitter circuits that
function well as 1 mw to 100 mw sources.    One needs a keyer and
antenna.

 

Last night I was able to decode AA4XX signal on 30 m he was running 10
mW and I am located just west of St Louis MO.    I thought that was
good, however, Paul's signal was being heard in Europe at the same time.
Paul's rig consists of assemblies he built himself with a simple dipole.
I was using software from the web, a old laptop computer, a 140 ft long
wire and a simple L tuner I had built myself.

 

Yes ham radio can still be a lot of fun.    The boxes we build may look
different but the thrill is the same.

 

For more info on weak signal hamming check out this web site
http://www.cnts.be/knights_qrss/index.html  or some of the circuits the
LWCA publishes on their site   www.lwca.org <http://www.lwca.org/>
The Part 15 fellows have been getting their 2 to 3 mW signals across to
Europe also with simple dipole antenna and a simple Epson oscillator
from Digi-Key on 13.55 Mhz.

 

Build something this week end      Have Fun

 

Stan ak0b

 

 

 

 

 



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