[Lowfer] BRO gone to Hell?

[Bryce R Ofstie]

> Looks like Bryce has his DDS exciter working,

Yes, glad you noticed Lyle.  Alternating QRSS30 and Hell.  Your DDS exciter
page was a big help in my getting it built and creating the message.  Its
basically identical to your simple "All-In-One" DDS unit.  Just left off the
filter since I'm using it to drive the simple PA at the antenna. I did add
the R-2R network but I'm just using pin 19 to drive the FET driver.  Maybe
on the next one I'll double the frequency and divide by 2 to get a good
square wave.  I put it back on 182.2 kHz this morning, conditions were poor
last night and I didn't see much from MN on the grabulator so I'll free up
some space at the watering hole for a while.

NOTE:  I'm running a 12.8 MHz TCXO so I'm not currently locked to any
frequency standard.  I should be close but don't use me for a reference.
I'll eventually build a second on that I can run off the 10 MHz Austron
Clock, once I've settled on a final design.

Touchy little chip (aren't they all?),  I tried to breadboard it but got
about a 25% success rate trying to program it.  Wish I could figure out how
to change the timing of the write process to make it more reliable.  Worked
well enough to convince me to build it though.  Building it made the
programming work much better(shorter leads, better connections...).  It's
not in a box and I do find that just touching it will make it reset to the
beginning.  I also have tried to program 2 of the chips and sometimes what I
want in the EEprom will not program.  It comes back as errors in certain
locations.  Shifting the message in the EEprom (by changing the order of
things or adding extra spaces) will cause it program error free.  It acts
just like a bit here or there does not like to be set so I have to move
things around to make sure those bits stay low or hi?  Odd.

I haven't tried the serial connection yet.  Looks similar to the serial
adaptor for the Yaesu or Icom rigs so I might try just hooking it up soon.
Maybe that I fix some of the EEprom problems, or not.

Bryce R Ofstie, KI0LE
LF Beacon BRO - 182.200 kHz
Duluth, Minnesota   EN36us

http://cp.duluth.mn.us/~ki0le/