New year, and found what was the issue with my 15 meter dipole!

Well it is 2014. The years just seem to fly by.

Let see whats going on. The SKCC is doing their month long special event station K3Y, all band and all call districts. I have 4 contacts so far. They are very good operators and will slow down for you if you need.

Quite by accident I found out what was wrong with my 15 meter dipole. It wasn't the dipole, it was the feed line. The PL-259 connector had a bad solder joint. I discovered this when I was unscrewing it from my antenna switch. The cable was pulling in and out of the connector and I could also twist the cable. So I am thinking this is not right. So I give a tug on the cable and was able to pull the cable out of the connector. I ended up replacing the connector and everything is fine now.

That is all for now.

-30-

The Baofeng Brothers

Like everyone I get a lot of emails from places I have bought from. Usually I do a cursory glance then delete them.

But I got one from Amazon that had Baofeng UV-5RAs for $31.00. I have one already but it is a great little radio and I couldn't pass up the deal. So I bought it plus a speaker mic and battery eliminator for a total of about $50.00 shipped! So now I have two. Since I have two of everything, I can leave some of the stuff in Vermont. Less stuff to pack when we go up there.

As you can see from the photo below the UV-5RA (on the right) has a different style case and has newer firmware. Everything else seems to be the same, even the charging station. I used it in the car Friday with the battery eliminator and a mag mount antenna on the way home from work and had a very nice QSO with Andy KB1OIQ. Very happy with it and not afraid to leave it in the car.

All for now -30-

The Baofeng brothers family photo

Project finally started!!

Well I finally got off my backside and started my project for the SWR meter/audio filter/Frequency meter.

Below is the front panel. The two meters are for the SWR meter. The switch and two pots are for the audio filter. The rectangular slot is for the frequency meter.

Front Panel

The back panel (below) has two 1/4" phone jacks for the audio input and output, two RCA phone jacks for the antenna input and output and a rectangular hole for the Molex plug that connects the frequency counter. The Molex connector also supplies 12 Volts to run all the electronics.

Rear Panel

This picture below shows how the PCBs are mounted. The one closes is the audio filter and the one further away is the SWR meter. A lot of empty space there... maybe room enough for some boots for my HW-8?

PCBs mounted to Chassis

Below is the frequency counter I will use.  You can just see the Molex connector between the HW-8 and my home brew QRP antenna tuner

Frequency Counter

Both the frequency counter and SWR bridge I got from Kits and Parts dot com  http://www.kitsandparts.com/ . Inexpensive and good documentation. I highly recommend them!

As with any project not everything goes the way you would like. Mounting of the frequency counter is turning out to be a little more of a project then I originally thought. I needed to order some 3/4" and 1/4' standoffs before I can finishing mounting it.

I always struggle with the mechanical part of a project. I am not good at cutting slots and aligning holes and I also end up scratching up the front. That is why I procrastinate so much when doing these projects. I was one of those kids that could not color inside the lines. In fact the box that is just above the frequency counter in the last picture is one of my projects. It is the antenna tuner I built 30 years ago. You can tell the slot in the front is kind of sloppy.

BTW, one of the reason I am doing this project is to see if my antenna tuner actually works. I never had a SWR meter so I was never sure it actually tuned correctly.

All for now. Next I will put the PCBs together. When the standoffs come I will try and finish mounting the frequency meter.

-30-

More HW-8 updates.

Did some more work on the HW-8. I added some Molex connectors so I can connect the frequency counter to the existing Molex connector on the back of the HW-8 . Now I can put the covers back on the HW-8 and reduce the RF interference I was getting from it. This is the first step to my next project. I intend to also add a SWR meter and an audio filter to the HW-8. Below is a picture of my station as it exist today.

I have a box to put every thing into. Just got to drill some holes and cut some slots. Might start this weekend.

More later.

The station

DG-5

The other day I was listening to a couple of gentlemen talking on the radio. They were talking about Kenwood hybrids, and mention about digital displays. Well it turns out there is a digital display for the TS-520S, the DG-5.

After a quick Google search I found one for sale on eBay. It was not working and the seller presumed the power supply was not working. So I bid on it a got it for $65.00. I am an engineer and was  also a tech for many years so I figured I would see if I could fixed it. For 65 bucks what do I have to lose.

So today I started troubleshooting it and found that there was a bad feed-through on the PCB. So using an old trick, I put a piece of wire through the hole and soldered it.

It works!!

Here are a couple of pictures of it

NEAR-FEST and news about 15m dipole.

So, I went to NEAR-Fest today and picked up some things I needed. I got a mike stand, a four way  antenna switch and a mag mount 2m/70cm mobile antenna. All at really good prices.

Some good news about the 15 meter dipole. It works. I don't know why, but when I hooked it up to the antenna switch, it seemed to be fine. Go figure. Maybe not making good connection to the radio?

But I was able to make two PSK31 contacts and one CW contact. Believe or not it has been 30 years since my last 15 meter CW contact, but won't be my last for sure.

More to come!!

15 meter dipole.. not so good.

Hello again. Well I finally got to put up my 15 meter antenna last Sunday. A big disappointment! It didn't really work all that well. Just by accident I decided to see if it was something wrong with the antenna and swapped with my 40 meter dipole and guess what? The 40 meter dipole worked great. I was getting a very strong signal! Then after thinking about and doing some research, it turns out a 40 meter dipole will also work on 15 meters because it is a 3rd harmonic of 40 meters. So I have been able to use 15 meters all this time but didn't realize it.

Anyway, here is a picture of the antenna. I will probable replace it with a home brew bazooka later on. I have already bought the coax for it. You can actually see all six of my antennas in this picture. The vertical one is my Slim Jim 2 meter/75 centimeter antenna. That antenna works great!

Had a couple of CW contacts this weekend. One with Chris N3GBJ. Very nice guy and very supportive. He suggested that I try the CWops academy, so I signed up for the April/May class. Thanks Chris!

Also been doing some web design using a program called "Kompozer" . I am trying to get a web page started on qsl.net. More on that later.

All for now.

New Radio!!

Well got my new 2 meter radio last Saturday, a Kenwood TM-281A really nice! I am only using it on low power at the moment. If you look at the picture, the power supply is just to the right. I bought it off eBay for $30.00, 30 Amps at about 13.3 volts. It will handling the load, just don't want to use more power then required for the repeaters I mostly use.

New this radio was $137.00 from GigaParts. One sold on eBay used for $160.00! no bargain.

My new Kenwood

On a different note I have received all the parts for my projects. I have no excuse for not starting it. hihi

All for now

Back already! Well I found the problem with my HW-8. It was a bad electrolytic cap in the power supply. Easy fix.

Since I have it in the "shop" I think I will do the project that I have been planning for over a year now. I have a SWR meter, frequency counter and audio switched capacitor filter that I want to build and put into a box. I bought the box the other day on eBay. I think it will be big enough to fit all the components into.

Right now I have the frequency counter tack soldered to the HW-8 PCB. I want to add pins to the 6 pin Molex connector on the back of the radio so I can disconnect the radio from the rest of the circuits. I want to keep the radio as original as possible.

More later.

Been a long time. Lets see if I can remember what happen this summer.

I did go to NEAR-Fest. A lot of stuff. I am not calling it junk, but..... Oh well. I will probable go again in October to see if I can get a 2 meter rig cheap.

My HW-8 started having problems. I am getting a very load buzz on the audio. I can still receive so most the radio is OK. Probable a filter cap has gone.

I bought a couple of headphones, A Hamilton MPC-2900PC (32 ohms)  and a Califone 3068AV (1000 ohms). The HW-8 manual says it requires a 1000 ohms impedance where the TS-520S requires 8 to 16 ohms. So I use the Hamilton on the Kenwood and the Califone on the HW-8.

Still have not made any contacts on the 80 meter sloper. 80 doesn't seem to have a lot activity on it so I don't know if the antenna works properly or not. I can tune up on it so I assume it will work.

I also bought a 15 meter dipole but haven't put it up yet. real soon now hihi.

As far NTS, the Boston repeater is somewhat working again with a temporary antenna. But now the Paxton repeater has problems with its transmitting antenna so I can't hear it very well. This limits my activity on the cm2m net. HHTN is still good and I still check in as often as I can.

Not real happy with the key I bought from MFJ. It is too stiff and it is kind of lopsided. The Navy keys look great!!

Here is a picture of my keys, two Navy and one MFJ. I am using the one on the left right now.

My straight keys

In addition to being a member of NAQCC and SKCC, I have joined FIST. I feel CW is an important part of amateur radio, even though it is not required. It is still very exciting to make CW contacts. I get a real feeling of accomplishment.

Tried running EasyPal software but I am having issue with the PTT on the serial port. It seems that Windows 7 initializes the RTS and DTR to on (or + voltage)  and the EasyPal software apparently leaves it in this state when in the receive mode. It only effects the RTS and DTR when it goes in the transmit mode. I know this because if I set the RTS or DTR to be low ( - voltage) during transmit, it puts the radio in the receive mode when is should be transmitting. Tried to get some help from the developer but he never answered my email. Well you get what you pay for.....

Below is a picture of my BiTX20 project. Hasn't changed since May hihi. They are about to sell a complete kit with a case. I think I will buy it.

BiTX20 transceiver