AmateurRadio.com

The way of the future?

I was doing some reading in the November issue of CQ and in the U.S the incandescent light bulb will "somewhat" come to an end as of January 1 2012....hmmm not to far away eh! Maybe a pre New Years Eve resolutions should be to get out and grab up the incandescent lights before they are gone. Not all is lost there is a reprieve for the tri-light, the appliance bulbs and get this flamed shaped chandelier bulb???? Light bulbs from 40 watts to 150 are soon to be no more!! Up here in Canada as of 2012 the light bulb will still populate the store shelves, for at least the time being anyway. As for the VE3WDM household we have gone (well almost) compact florescent (CFL) for about 4 years. Now back then these puppies were not cheap and well to be honest they have come down in price but not a whole lot. So how many of you ham's out there are into the
CFL thing??? Now since I have had them for some time now I do want to clear up some myths and truths about these types of lights. One of the myths is they just don't last long....well for 4 years I have not changed one CFL!!! Oh and believe me we do not live in the dark here either. I get my exercise up and down stairs turning off lights that somehow just get left on???  They do take some time to get to full illumination that is an annoying truth and if the room is cool it's even longer. There are some newer ones out there that are supposed to be "instant on" I have seen these CFL's in action and  they are not at all like our friend the incandescent light were we are used to poof and there is light.  Another myth....well for my home is that they cause RFI. I have not found this to be the case my rig (Elecraft K3,K2) does not show any S meter change if the lights are on or off. It's the Plasma TV here that kills me!!! Another truth is they do cast a "different" type of light from the light bulb, you do get used to it. The CFL market now offers cool white, warm white and reading lights so they have come a long way. I have not had a chance to test these as my darn CFL's wont burn out!!! Here is a myth and a truth combination, the myth is you will save on your hydro bill each month.....the truth is not until you have paid for the out of pocket cost of the CFL's!! Speaking of cost I did say in the opening paragraph that our household has "almost" gone CFL. In our bathroom we have a vanity light that is just great. It takes what is called 6 fat Albert 40 watt bulbs. I still have the incandescent ones and this past weekend replaced them all with......you guessed it with the BAD incandescent ones. Why you ask???? well for 6 it cost me 12.00 to go with CFL fat Albert's your looking at 96.00!!!! It sure would take a long time to get that money back in hydro savings.

With all of Elecraft's radio kits the builder is able to purchase add-on's to the radio either as needed, when able to afford them or if you want to expand into a new area of ham radio like FM or digital. At this point I am adding the KIO2 to my Elecraft K2, I want to remote mount the 100 watts amp (KPA100) and the antenna tuner (KAT100). To do so my next project is to build the KIO2 module. By adding this unit I am able to communicate with the K2 through my P.C. Also the K2 can operate along side the external amp and antenna tuner. So back to the KIO2 project.....the first step in the assembley is to mount two brass nuts to

Soldered nut

the 9 pin D connector (DB9F). To make this part of the project go smoothly you begin by change the tip on your soldering iron. I have the Weller WES51 soldering station it is a 50 watts unit and has been very reliable. I am able to change from a very slender tip to a larger tip for better heat transfer. I also add a little bit of solder paste to the nut and chassis of the DB9F. This helps the solder flow from part to part. Finally I have a larger diameter solder just for these types of jobs. This allows me to feed the solder to the spot were needed and I am able to get more flow of solder to that spot at one time. The next step seemed impossible to me at first,  I was to press the small PC board between the top and bottom rows of the DB9F

DB9F installed

connectors.  After a few gentle tries and not successful I gave the board a good push and it did slip on and was a solid mating between the board and connector. At this step you may have to give a little elbow grease but the board will actually mate with the connector. Next I had to mount a 16.289 Mhz crystal care has to be taken as you can damage the crystal very easily with the heat from the soldering iron. The tip on the iron

Soldering on the can

has to be changed back to the smaller tip enabling you to solder the crystal to the PC board. Once that is done a ground has to go from the top of the crystal (the can) to the PC board. To do this you must take the time to change the Weller tip again to the larger tip. Failing to do this and trying to do it the "fast" way may result in damage to the crystal or a poor solder job.....but most likely it will be both. Thus no time will actually had been saved.  A discarded terminal lead is used for grounding. I start by forming the lead to fit properly. Then tin the top of the crystal add a little flux to the formed component lead. Put the lead on the top of the can of the crystal and add solder. Doing this way allows you to keep the soldering iron tip on the can for very short intervals. Now  it's a simple case of mounting resistors and cap's after changing the Weller tip to the smaller tip. The inductors have been

Bending inductor leads

upgraded by Elecraft to a larger current carrying inductor. Because of this the leads have to be bent to allow component leads to fit onto the board. While on the subject of bending leads I have always had fun getting the three leads of the transistors and voltage regulators lined up with the outline on the PC board. I found a way that works almost all the time and is very simple...just the way I like it.....I use a pair of my tweezers to bend the center lead out and away from the two outer leads. Then I slide the tweezers between the center lead and two outside leads. The I simply bend the center lead upright. The tweezers

Middle lead bent outward

seem to provide the spacing that is needed for the component to fit into the board nicely. I have wound many toroids in my kit building days but the KIO2 board has the smallest toroid I have ever seen!!! Also this toroid does not have rounded edges but sharp right angle type edges, I didn't think this would be an issue until I started to wind the toroid. The first winding adventure had me removing the enamel coating on the #26 wire. As I wound the toroid the wire enamel was scrapped off but the sharp edges on the toroid core. It was time to unwind the toroid and re-evaluate the way I am going to wind this darn toroid. In the past as I threaded the wire threw the core it would ride along the cores edge and I pulled

Tweezers inserted then bend lead

the wire tight. Doing this just scored the heck out of the wire. The toroid was to have 12 turns which meant the wire would be very close to each other so I did not want any shorts. It's easier to fix this now by rewinding the toroid than later removing it on the completed board. I overcame this problem by not allowing the wire to touch the core edges as I was winding. Always keeping a large loop in the wire

Pin and toroid

around the core seem to do the trick. As I closed the loop the wire was allow to rest gently on the toroid it was  NOT pulled tight as with other smooth toroids. There were two changes I had to make to the KIO2 the first was adding a 9 turn toroid in place of a smaller inductor at the L1 position. When remote

End result

 mounting the 100 watt amp and antenna tuner the KIO2 has to control more. When it does the the current draw goes up as well. The inductor supplied with the KIO2 is rated around 15 mA with the added KPA100 the draws 65 mA at idle.  The advice is to replace the inductor with an 8-9 turn FT23-43 toroid. Elecraft was great in

Keeping wide turns

shipping me the toroid I needed and the wire was well. There was a bit of confusion on my part regarding L1, the kit comes with two PCB's on KIO2 and the other AUX2. I assumed the L1 position on the KIO2 board was the spot for the new toroid....but it's not. You also have an L1 position on the AUX2 board and this is were the new toroid is placed. The other change that has to be made is the cabling from the KIO2. Normally there is just a cable from the K2 over to your PC and that's it. When you remote mount the KPA100 and KAT100 the cable path now must not only go to your PC but to the

New L1 Toroid

 KPA100/KAT100 combo as well. So there is an additional cable that has to be soldered to the DB9M connector going to the K2's DB9F. This is the reason for adding the larger inductor as more power will be required of the L1 inductor. It's like it is doing double duty. For most of my PCB board handling needs I find

Alligator clip vise

my Panavise to do the trick. For soldering the interconnecting cables to the DB9M I find the alligator clip type vise works great. I can place all the wires in the DB9M and solder them all at once. The final step in the construction is to add an 8 conductor cable from the KIO2 board to the AUX board. The Elecraft instructions ask  you to strip, tin and place each of the 8 conductors in the designated holes on each board then solder. When I did this I found the individual wires coming out of the PC board. I then soldered the first 2 set of wires in place and it was much easier to then instal the rest and solder them in. It's

installing in K2

 done and installed in the K2 time to test it and move on to getting the K2 into portable/home mode but that is a whole new post.

Some winter fun projects

What is wrong with this picture?

It has been very busy both at work and here at home I have not had much time to get on the radio or to blog. I  have just had time in the late evenings or early  mornings to get on the laptop and check in with other bloggers to see what's up. As the summer moves on to other areas of the world and winter settles in here it's time to move from outdoor activities to indoor ones. Sure getting on the radio is one of them but heating up the soldering iron is another activity. Some projects I will be working on over the next couple of months are  Idiom Press's Logikit COMS-4 keyer, Elecrafts KAT2 antenna tuner and KBT2 battery kit for the Elecraft K2 radio. Now this is not going to hold me for the whole winter so some other kits will have to be considered. But until then this will keep me hopping along with the radio op time for at least the fall and into the new year.  I am getting my Elecraft K2 ready for both home and out door (in the summer) operations. To do so I have to build and install the KAT2 antenna tuner and KBT2 battery as well. Speaking of the KBT2 have a look at the picture above...all  you Elecrafters out there what is WRONG in this picture??? One project that is almost complete is the KIO2 RS232 interface board. This unit will allow communication between my K2 rig,  external tuner/amp combo and my PC. There is a mod that has to be done to the KIO2 board to allow external mounting. The KIO2 is going to be my next post with assembly and the needed mod.

Random shack with random goodies.

For the second time this year I took inventory of the ham shack, I am a firm believer of " if you don't use it lose it" I find it very interesting how one gathers equipment and accessories and some acquire  more dust than operating time. So once again it was time to put some "stuff" up for sale and see how they move. We have a great online swap net here in Ontario and I have had very good results using it. Over the summer I made about 900.00 with moving idle equipment. This time around with adding the Alpha Delta DX-33 antenna to the attic it made other antenna's redundant and thus up for sale. I have seen folk's (not just hams) hold onto things until they are worthless....it's just a waste. There are always others who can put to good use things I am just holding onto. Along with the antennas and some other things up to this point I have made 400.00 ham bucks!!

Each year I go in search of a calender to mark down all the contests I would like to take part in each season. It is hung on the wall in the radio room and allows me to plan for the big all weekend contests right down to the 1/2  day short ones. I know there are some very good contest calender online like WA7BNM's and I have this as a bookmark on all my P.C.'s. But seeing a month's overview on the wall helps me make sure the contest does not sneak up on me. Nothing like surprising my wife with a 48 hour contest!!! Not sure why I never thought about this before but the ARRL has a calender with their contests as well as other major contests in it. I went to the website to order it with the exchange rate it came to 15.00. That is not bad at all considering the time I spend putting the contests in the calender each year. I then was shocked to see the shipping was 15.00, when I add the taxes to be paid and any duty the total for a calender is around 34.00!!!! It's looks like this year I am either going to print off WA7BNM's calender or make up another one.