Imabug's journey into electronics and amateur radio as AB4UG and VA6BUG
My CC1 is finally in its enclosure!
The templates for the faceplates I made worked out pretty well. The holes weren’t perfect, but I blame that on using a drill to make the holes. Would have been much easier if I had a drill press, or ideally a hole punch. For the BNC hole, I didn’t have a 1/4″ drill bit so I just used a 3/8″ bit (the largest I had) and my Dremel with a sanding drum to enlarge the hole.
Looks pretty good in its enclosure I think. Now I need to put some labels on it.
Update: After a couple of iterations with paper, some of the measurements were adjusted and the drawing updated. I’m pretty sure the measurements are accurate and will serve to help other CC1 builders create a drilling template for their build. As always, keep in mind the “measure twice, cut once” principle. YMMV. Links to my templates are at the end of the post. Feel free to use them as a starting point for your CC1 build.
In preparation for drilling out the holes in the face plates for the CC1 enclosure, I used my digital calipers to measure the distances to the center of each of the connectors that would need a hole.
First I started measuring while holding it in my hand, but I realized there’s a little bit of play when the board is in the enclosure and measurements would change depending on how I was holding it.
I decided to place CC1 and enclosure on the table and starting with the left-most connector (A), measure it’s position relative to the left and bottom edges of the enclosure. For the remaining connections, I just measured the offset from the first one since their positions are fixed. Seemed like the most accurate way of doing things.
In Dia, I made this drawing up
The face plates are 74mm x 29mm. The top one is the back plate with the largest hole corresponding to the BNC jack. The bottom one is for the front plate. The Dia version should be to scale, but when I printed it, it was just a tiny bit short along the x-axis. Apparently printer scaling and computer scaling is a tiny bit different. It should still be pretty close to use as a template though. Will try cutting it the paper version to see how well it fits before I start drilling.
These are the measurements I came up with
Front plate.
Measurement for A is relative to the left and bottom edge. Measurements for B-G are relative to A.
| Hole | X (mm) | Y (mm) | (X, Y) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 12.5 | 15.5 | (12.5, 15.5) |
| B | +12 | +3 | (24.5, 18.5) |
| C | +22 | -2.5 | (34.5, 13) |
| D | +31 | -2.5 | (43.5, 13) |
| E | +38 | -3.5 | (50.5, 12) |
| F | +38 | +0.5 | (50.5, 16) |
| G | +48.5 | +3 | (60.5, 18.5) |
Back plate.
Measurement for A is relative to the left and bottom edge. Measurements for B and C are relative to A.
| Hole | X (mm) | Y (mm) | (X, Y) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 18 | 15.5 | (18, 15.5) |
| B | +22.5 | 0 | (40.5, 15.5) |
| C | +37 | +2 | (55, 17.5) |
Template files. Download these to use as a starting point for your build.
The 40m Etherkit OpenBeacon I ordered arrived yesterday and made for a nice fun evening at the workbench. It will go along nicely with the other 30m OpenBeacon I received from Matthew/W2MDW. There are a few differences in the production version versus the 30m beta version.
Spent a couple hours at the workbench assembling it and it worked as soon as I connected it to the computer. The only snafu I had was accidentally mixing up two resistors, making me unsolder the first one to switch it out with the correct one. I also got to experiment with using a drill to twist the wires together for the bifilar transformer. Worked amazingly well.
Looking forward to getting this on the air and seeing how far it gets heard. One of these days I’ll have to make up an enclosure and 30m and 40m antennas to put both of the OpenBeacons on the air full time.
I thought the CRX1 fit pretty nicely in that parts bin, so I decided to make it into a container (can’t really call it an enclosure) for the board. It’s not an elegant enclosure like the kind Dave/AA7EE makes, but it works out pretty well, and shows off the board nicely. Maybe when I get some enclosure making skill levels, I’ll make a new one.
I was originally going to get some standoffs to secure the board to the bin, but then I thought it might be nice for there to be a bit of weight so that it would sit a little more securely. I cut a piece of 1×3″ board to fit and screwed it to the bin, then screwed the CRX1 to the board.
Now I need to find some rubber feet for the bottom of the bin and some knobs for the gain and tuning pots.
The initial version of the Etherkit HF return loss bridge. Pretty simple. Now I need to learn what it does and how to use it.
