Today the receiver is ready in his first stage. So far known the mods are used and the first QSO is recorded (see *.mov). The next step is de finetuning to hear the stations more easy, have to check the filters and potmeters!
Dec 12
Rotor management extra info by PE1ANS
The rotor soft- and hardware you can find on this site is in the development fase.
PE1ANS (OM Jan) had picked up the mean time stage of the development fase with his own few on the software.
I nice small movie will show an error in the source code, when you push the button to 0 degrees the relais stage will be active!
The next blog of this item we will hopefully give the right solution for this problem!
The small (*.avi) movie is made in visuele simulator PROTEUS ISIS.
More pictures and a nice small movie of the end product will coming soon !
Dec 10
Start with building the Taurus transceiver
“Started with the building of the Taurus TX, 3.5 Watt qrp SSB transceiver”
The transceiver is design on two PCB’s and designed by SP5DDJ (see links page).
The PCB’s can used for 20,40 and 80 meter homemade TX.
A few parts you have to change to change the basic Ham-frequency.
In polish you can find an easy manual with the basic steps and also a checklist for the needed parts. When follow the ‘installation’ manual you will get a nice small QRP transceiver.
Their are a few mods for the basic-PCB .. when finished the building I will place them in the download section. In the meantime you can see a few
at – https://pa-11019.blogspot.nl – the hamsite of PD7MAA.
Nov 25
Rotor management hardware update
In the time we are building on the PCB with the electronics (for PIC controler) I had to bring the old hardware inside a new box. Also the rotation of the Antenna rotor I have to do by hand. But safety first .. the old hardware is build together in a plastic ‘box’ with on top space for the future electronincs.
See the results on the next pictures.
.: First start .: Meantime box ready
Nov 16
Found many RF interference from Linksys hardware!
“Today I found the source of a large RF noise on 20 and 40 meter band!”
On the next frequencies (14.151, 14.215, 14.274, 14.333, 14.396 and 7.098, 7080, 7.035 and 21.113, 21.172, 21.297) i heard a large spike signal. A signal with an ‘step over frequency’ (harmonic) of 60 kHz. The signal was so strong that on the ham-band I couldn’t work anymore.
I had switched of all the UTP network and cisco switches.
The noise was gone !
By switching on, one by one .. it seems that the main bad source was linksys IP
SIP phone SPA942 and the Cisco 1 Gb switch SD2005.
The basic idea I found on the website from ehamforum (scroll to the bottom of the
forum .. )
Now I have to find out (or change the hardware =;) to reduce the RF noise on this hardware.
Oct 21
New antenna active ZS6BKW multiband dipole!
“New wired multiband antenna is active, here you see how I build this nice antenne’
This great wired dipole (26 m.)will give you a lot of plessure on the HF-bands.
On the 20 and 40 meter band you don’t need an antenna-tuner, the SWR is nearly 1:1.1 (40 m) and 1:1.3 (20 m) ..
I have to make more tests to make the SWR great on 20 meter.
From the webpgae of OM PA1GF you can see the right values of the wires.
I made the option with 450 Ohm ‘ladderline’ and the RG213 coax cable direct to the
tranceiver. On pic.a you can see how I made the connection from the ‘ladderline’ to the wires. The ‘ladderline’ and the wires are twisted ‘litze wire’ , don’t use massive cable or line !
The next foto (pic b.) is the picture from the plastic tube (40 mm) with to blind ends.
In centre you make a hole as big as the PL-chassis, the other end you make a small notch who is used for the twinlead cable.
The last foto will give you the view how the cable is active at outside.
Oct 07
New rotor management with PIC-controler
“Start to build a new management system with PIC-controler for the Antenna-rotor”
The next pictures will give the few of the development of the antenna-rotor interface
with a PIC 16F84 controler. The development is started on a breadboard to find the
correct parts and programming of the PIC controler.
I have started with the most easy program ‘Hello World’
The next step was the basis program and he 3rd stage was the connection to a small relais to stear the antenna rotor.
.: First test .: Text on LCD .: Rotor text on screen
The next schema will give you the information where we had start with.
In the next weeks we have to test the combination of the hard- and software.
To show the full page of the schema, click twice on the picture !
On the schema you see the X-tal with a value of 10 Mhz, with any other value you have to change the timer (time) in the PICBasic routine.
See the download section for the latest *.zip file !
.: First stage rotor schema