Author: Eugene

Trying out 6m

Coming up on Saturday is the Central States VHF Society Spring VHF/UHF Sprints. It’s a short 4 hour affair starting at 7PM and ending at 11PM (2300Z-0300Z).

After reading a copy of Six Meters: A Guide to the Magic Band that I found at a used book store, it seemed like it would be a pretty cool band to play on. I usually don’t hear much on 6m during my casual twiddling around on the radio dial. I really don’t know how the antenna performs on 6m aside from the fact that the radio seems to be able to tune it there. Hopefully this will be a chance to find out. Hopefully there will be some good propagation for me on Saturday.

Circuit experiment: Colpitts oscillator

To continue debugging my problems with CC1, I needed a signal source that I could feed into the transciever. Jason/NT7S sketched out a simple crystal based Colpitts oscillator circuit for me to try.

Colpitts oscillator schematic
Colpitts oscillator schematic

Fortunately I was able to find everything I needed in my parts bin to breadboard the circuit. I used a 7.030 MHz crystal and a 10 pF capacitor at the output.

Colpitts oscillator
Colpitts oscillator
Colpitts oscillator
Colpitts oscillator

Will give it another examination tomorrow to make sure I have all the right components and that everything is laid out properly on the breadboard, then give it some power and see if I get anything out of it.

Shopping list for Atlanta Hamfest

Will be heading back to the Atlanta Hamfest in June, so I guess I need to start thinking about a shopping/wish list and to set a budget for myself.

At the moment, the list is pretty short

  • Cable adapters and connectors
  • Morse code keys (I seem to have a bit of a collecting bug now)
  • Antenna analyzer
  • Antenna building supplies
  • Oscilloscope probe(s)
  • Test gear

I’d love to be able to score another deal like I got with the HD-10 I found at the Orlando Hamcation. Looking forward to seeing all the different offerings out in Atlanta.