Tag: Etherkit

The CC1 kit is getting closer to being completed. All the tiny bits are soldered on, and now there’s just the toroids left to wind. I put T1 and L4/L5 on last night and now there are just 8 inductors left to wind. No lost pieces, only one extra part (which was extra to begin with) and only two fried components.

I discovered when I went to install R50 that I had accidentally installed it in the R26 position. They’re both the same resistance, but R50 is a larger resistor. In my haste, I must have just grabbed the first 100 ohm resistor that I saw and put it on. Fortunately I was able to get it off the board without too much fuss and put it where it belonged.

I also found that installing U2 and Q9 is a whole lot easier with lots and lots of flux on the board. Wish I had known that when I installed U1 and U5.

I better get cracking on learning Morse code!

CC1 works!

Soldered the L12 and L13 inductors (heat strippable enameled wire rocks BTW), made up a cable to connect the straight key (CC1 is really designed for a paddle, but I made the straight key work) and plugged in some headphones.

Applied power and CC1 greeted me by beeping ‘CC1’ in Morse code. Tapped the key and got a stream of dits. Grounded the other wire and got a stream of dahs. Pressed the S1 button and got an ‘S’ and pressing S2 gave me the frequency (I could only copy an R and 8 in the string of numbers).

Started work on the next section, the Mixer/IF/Product detector/BFO. With the connectors and larger caps, some of the pads on that section of the board are starting to get a little hard to access with the chisel tip on my soldering iron. If I’m going to do more stuff like this, I’m going to have to find myself a narrower chisel tip to work with.

About one quarter through this section of the build now and starting to get into the band specific components. I’ll be building my CC1 for the 40m band. Quite pleased with how things are going so far and I’m learning quite a bit.

CC1 has a lot of toroids on it. Dave/AA7EE wound some pretty nice looking toroids for his CC1 so I asked him for some tips and tricks for winding toroids. He uses a crochet hook to pull the wire through, but also pointed me at this YouTube video showing the “chopstick method”.

It’s a pretty good way of winding toroids. The chopstick holds the toroid and lets you apply a bit of tension to the wire to get nice tight windings.

2 down, 11 more to go…

The CC1 build is back on track with the replacement U6 transistor and U4 oscillator.

I ended up completely mangling 3 out of the 5 pads that U6 is mounted on, so I had to do some creative/ugly jumpering between U6 and the components it connects to.

Pro tip: Before trying to remove a part, make sure all the solder is removed before pulling it off.

It’s supposed look like U7 on the right (maybe minus that big ball of solder on pin 4). Instead, I had to jumper across to C65 and C66 and connect pins 1 and 3 (normally connected by a trace under U6). The wire to the right connects V_out to the 3.3V test point. It looks ugly, but it works. Still getting 5V from U7, and 3.26V out of U6. For a while, I was getting a little worried that I had completely ruined things.

CC1 build is back on track. Next I need to wind some inductors for L12 and L13 to finish off the audio amp/mute stage.

Finished off the microcontroller/DDS section of the build with the installation of U5. Used the solder and wick method to put it on as suggested in the assembly guide. Used a bit of flux paste to help hold the IC down and went at it with the solder. Worked out reasonably well and I think I managed to get it on without any solder bridges.

The next section (Audio amp/mute) has more SMT and is a fairly dense section of the board. Takes some patience and steady hand to get all the components in, but by now you’re used to the ‘tack and solder’ method so it goes a little faster.

Dave/AA7EE suggested installing one of the electrolytic caps (C36) in this stage and thinking I’d be clever, I went ahead and did it early. A little too early as it turned out, because the stage also calls for the two other larger electrolytic caps (C20 and C29). C36 is right next to C29, and if C36 is there first, it’s impossible to install C29. So because I jumped the gun, I ended up having to remove C36, solder on C29 then solder C36 back on.

The last part of the stage involves putting on the connectors and switches, which is pretty easy and goes pretty quickly. Almost starts looking like a transceiver now.

Next step is to wind two inductors and put them on. Once the replacement U4 and U6 arrive, I’ll put those on and be able to test if it produces any tones.