Eugene

CRX1 Power and Audio amp

Ahh, the smell of melting solder.

Started soldering the bits onto the CRX1 circuit board. After going through and taking inventory of everything and noting where everything goes, it was time to heat up the soldering iron.

Here, the power conditioner (middle right) and audio amp (upper left) stages have been completed. Haven’t applied power to the board yet. One of the people assembling a beta kit used header pins and connectors for the external parts (like the power connector, pots, etc) so I think I’ll do the same. Then I won’t have to worry about soldering temporary wires when I get around to testing things.

I made it half way through the sidetone oscillator stage (lower middle) before I decided to call it quits for the night.

Having everything on one side of the board definitely makes things a little easier. I don’t need to flip the board over, and the board lays flat on the table. The pieces are still pretty small, but with some more experience under my belt now, it’s not so bad. I’m starting to like working with SMT, although I haven’t quite decided if I prefer it over through hole.

While I was working, the lens from my magnifier light fell out. One of the clips had broken and the lens ended up falling out. Fortunately I wasn’t soldering at the time so it just fell into my lap and onto the ground. No breakage fortunately, but now I’ll have to figure out how to secure the lens with one of the clips missing.

Back at it tomorrow.

Etherkit CRX1

Thanks to Jason/NT7S, I now have a new kit to work on: the Etherkit CRX1. I have to admit that getting it was a bit of a surprise. When I pulled the box out of the mailbox, I thought it was the CC1 I had to send back for fixing.

The CRX1 is the little brother receive only version of Jason’s CC1 kit. Like the CC1, it’s almost all SMD components with a few through hole pieces. Everything is on one side of the board though, which should make assembly easier.

According to Jason, this is production kit #1. I’m looking forward to putting this one together. Hopefully I don’t mess anything up this time. As with the CC1, I’ll be documenting my build progress here.

NAQP 2013

Saturday I spent a few hours on the radio participating in the North America QSO Party. Managed to pick up 46 QSOs mostly on 20m and 40m. Added a few new states towards my quest for WAS, including CA, WA and CO. I was just tuning around casually picking out the reasonably strong signals that didn’t require me to work too hard to interpret, as well as states that I knew I didn’t have QSOs with previously.

One thing I did decide during the course of playing radio was that the shack needs a more comfortable chair.

Playing RTTY radio

Spent a couple hours yesterday afternoon out at the club communications trailer for the ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY). Tom (AJ4UQ) set up one of the club radios, a Yaesu 897D and one of the laptops to run RTTY.

ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY) 2013 from the CARS trailer

Radio set up for ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY) 2013

There were two other rookies that came out, James (KK4REM) and Andrew (KF7YOX). We operated using my call sign this year and after Tom showed us the basics and helped set up some macros in fldigi, we were off and running.

ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY) from the CARS Trailer

The radios and laptop were initially set up to run off the batteries in the trailer, but after a few minutes, we noticed the voltages displayed by the radio were getting pretty low. A quick look revealed the batteries had gone dry for some reason despite having been topped up a couple of weeks ago. They were also unusually hot even after they were refilled with water. Some of the more knowledgable people suspected a problem with the charger not reducing the power once the batteries were charged. We managed to find a long extension cord and switched over to wall power.

This highlighted another purpose for these “contests”: it gives you a chance to exercise your equipment and discover problems, especially important for something intended to be used in emergency/public communications purposes.

After getting past that, we started hunting around the bands looking for other people playing in the Rookie Roundup. We wandered around several bands, learned how to adjust and tune the antenna (a Little Tarheel) and a bit about how to use the radio. We found a few people and made a handful of contacts, but it seemed like it was easier to hear them than to make contact with them. We decided that maybe the antenna didn’t have a good enough ground plane, and Tom thought that maybe some radials would help. That’ll be something else to try for later.

I think in the 3 hours or so that we were operating, we made about 5 or 6 contacts. More importantly, I think the three of us learned a little more about radio operating. I learned a little more about the inner workings of the trailer and a little more about the different digital modes. We got to hear several different types of digital modes, including some PSK signals.

Overall, even though we didn’t make a lot of contacts, I think it was still a pretty good time. Got outside to play radio, worked with a couple of the newer hams, all great fun.

Now I want to see if I can build my own interface so I can do digital modes at home.

ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY)

Coming up this weekend (Aug 18) is the ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY) which I’m planning on participating in. Like last year, we’ll be using the club’s communications trailer and setting up at the old fire station off Dorchester Road (6938 Dorchester Rd) by the Air Force base.

Not sure who’s call sign we’ll be using yet but hopefully the bands will be in decent shape and we’ll be able to make some contacts.