AmateurRadio.com

The Splinter – from Breadboard Radio

Kit building appears to be on the rise again.  With so many people talking about it lately I attempted to research sources for kits, only to find out that there wasn’t a single-source for Ham Radio kit suppliers.

I decided to put together a good list of sources for kits that are currently available.  Many of these are for QRP operation, but a few are full-featured professional transceivers (Elecraft, DZ).  On the beginners side there are a few sources that stand out:  Hendricks has a great assortment of kits, including some SSB QRP equipment.  QRPme offers the inexpensive, easy-to-build tuna-can products, and I would like to make special mention of the Four State QRP Group NS-40 which has the coils etched right into the PC board!  What a great idea!  I’ve covered trasmitters, transceivers, and some receivers here.  Some accessories are mentioned in the source descriptions.

Revised 7/19/2012  Changes in Hendricks QRP Kits, YouKits, Genesis Radio, Tony Parks, and removed the coming soon designation on Heathkit.  I didn’t check ALL of the prices, so don’t hold me to total accuracy in that department.

Revised 10/22/2012  Changes in Hendricks, YouKits, Tony Parks, Small Wonder Labs, Wilderness Radio, and Four State QRP Group.  Removed Heathkit, Added HSC.

Revised 2/18/2013  Changes in Hendricks, YouKits, Tony Parks. Added CR KITS, and BreadBoard Radio.

Revised 2/20/2013 Added K5BCQ & K5JHF Kits

Enjoy, and feel free to add any corrections, or additions in the comments.  The list can always be found at RadioKitGuide.com–Neil W2NDG

-Hendricks QRP Kits http://www.qrpkits.com/

• BitX20A/17A SSB Transceiver.  The BitX20A and BitX17A are complete SSB kits with board, all parts, digital display and custom powder coated and punched case that is based on the BitX20 that was designed by Ashlan Farhan.  Output is about 10 Watts.  $180.00 + S&H
• PFR-3a 3-Band Portable Field Radio.  Bands : 40 meters, 30 meters and 20 meters. Tuning range: Full band coverage.  Mode: CW only.   $240.00 + S&H
• NADC30/40 CW Transceiver.  Nearly All Discrete Component CW Transceiver for either 30m or 40m.  Tuning range ~ 60 kHz.  Power output: 3.5 watts.  Full Kit: $130.00 + S&H
• Ft Tuthill 15 Meter CW Transceiver.   Two 60 KHz tuning ranges, ~ 21.000 – 21.060 and 21.075 – 21.135 MHz.  Power Output: 5 Watts.  Complete Kit (w/ case and digital dial) $130.00 + S&H
• Ft Tuthill 160 Meter CW Transceiver.   Two 30 KHz tuning ranges, ~ 1800 – 1835 and 1830 – 1865 MHz.  Power Output: 5 Watts.  Complete Kit (w/ case and digital dial) $130.00 + S&H
• DCxxB Board Only Trasceiver Kit.  These radios are the next generation of the popular DC40 transceiver that was also designed by Steve Weber.  The kit will come with 1 crystal for the band specified. 7.040 for DC40, 10.120 for DC30, 14.060 for DC20.  Board-Only kit with decals: $30.00 + S&H
• Weber Tri-Bander.  The Weber Tri-Bander can be built for any three of these bands: 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, or 15.  5 Watts out on all bands at 13.8 VDC.  Built in Iambic keyer with 5 to 40 wpm code speed.  DDS VFO for rock steady stability with 50 Hz and 200 Hz tuning rates.  Many more features!  $200 + S&H
• Scout Regen Receiver.  A simple 2 band regenerative radio receiver that is capable of receiving signals from 3.5 to 11 MHz.  A complete kit with L shaped aluminum chassis, quality doublesided Read the rest of this entry »

I was poking around on 40 meters last night with the Atlas 210X and my random wire.  I spent some time listening to the end

CU7AA

of the Brothers Net, and a bunch of Hams from the middle of the country, and caught someone with a heavy accent using a recorded CQ.  The accent was not familiar, and the callsign was CU7AA, which according to QRZ.com is in the Azores.  Looking at the picture, I’m guessing that many of you have probably talked to this station, but it’s still a thrill for me, and my bargain-basement setup.  I threw my callsign out, and snagged a QSO with him.  I love this.  Why is it so addicting?

I may have mentioned more than once that we live in a rather small apartment.  It’s the upstairs of a cape-cod-style home, which is shoe-horned onto a tiny corner lot.  The only trees are 4 old silver maples (often called swamp maples) scattered around the

Silver Maple (from Cornell)

front and side yards.  The maple directly opposite the window where my equipment resides is not very healthy.  This has both benefits and hindrances.  On the negative side, we have to watch the cars, because it rains tree limbs in windstorms.  On the plus side however, it makes it easy to shoot wires into the sturdier parts of the tree, and once a year, I get the most amazing crop of maitake mushrooms growing around the base (easily 12-15 pounds of them).  I’ve mentioned to the landlord that the whole thing will come down in the next superstorm we get, but he seems content to have it stand there for now, threatening the house and any cars parked in the vicinity.  For now, I decided to take advantage of the accessibly to the higher branches.

I threw a length of 16 ga wire up into the tree about a month or so ago, and connected the other end to my MFJ 941-D tuner.  I estimate the wire to be around 38 feet.  With this setup I have been able to tune up well on 20M and OK on 40M and 10M.  My holiday present from KD2CHE this year was an old Atlas 210X, in excellent operating condition.  This setup got me contacts in Florida, Michigan, Maine, Manitoba, Missouri, and Puerto Rico.  The morning after the crazy windstorm this past week, I was amazed to see that the random wire was still up.  That day however, the winds continued, and when I got home I discovered that Mother Nature seems to think that the best type of antenna for me is an inverted-L.  One of the smaller limbs that I had managed to throw the chunk of wood I tied the far end of the wire to, had snapped in the storm, but the wire simply dropped through the tangle of remaining branches, and now dangled about 8 feet off of the ground.

I had planned on fixing, and improving on this over this past weekend, but before I did, my son and I fired up the Atlas on Saturday morning.  The wind mod seemed to actually improve my performance on 10M, and had no effect on 20M.  I made contacts with Belgium, and Serbia on 20M, and started getting lots of 10M contacts from the Southwest, and one from Washington State.  Since it was the 10-10 Winter SSB contest weekend, I got my required 10 contacts easily, and joined 10-10 (76641).

I don’t want to put up anything more elaborate at this place.  With the resources available, and an antenna-phobic landlord, this is about as far as I can go.  Also, if all goes well, we won’t be there much longer.  The next place will have to be antenna-friendly.  I spent some time Sunday re-stringing the wire (now about 60 feet) through the old maple, and now over to a second maple at the end of our driveway.  A quick test showed it was still working, and got 2 more contacts in the Southwest.

Ham Radio on a Shoestring, While Living in a Shoebox.  Does that sound like a good book-title?

73 – W2NDG

Greetings AmateurRadio.com readers!  I have not written in quite awhile, so I feel the need to catch up a bit.  I’ve had so much going on lately that I just had to prioritize what time I have left at the end of the day.  I hope to be posting again on a more regular basis.

First of all, I want to mention that KD2CHE and I tied the knot back in October, on a cliff overlooking Lake Tahoe, on a beautiful (and warm thankfully) day in Incline Village, NV.  We were quite literally a stones throw from California.  The rest of our trip out west was great, including visits to two Silicon Valley surplus shops: Weird Stuff Warehouse, and Halted Supply Company (HSC), as well as HRO in Sunnyvale.  We even had a special tour of LucasFilms/Arts/ILG courtesy of some great friends with connections.  On the plane, on the way back, while leafing through a copy of Monitoring Times I purchased at HRO, I noticed that in an article about Ham Radio Kit Building, Kirk Kleinschmidt mentioned my Amateur Radio Kit Roundup as the source for info on kit building.  While it was a nice surprise, it also got me thinking that I needed to make the guide more accessible.  I will still post the changes here, but as a link to the guide’s new URL: RadioKitGuide.com.  For now it’s just a link to the page at my blog, but will evolve into a full wiki-style site in the near future.

My trusty HTX-10 has been busy these couple of months, logging calls to Alaska, Namibia, Croatia, New Mexico, Colorado, and California to name a few.  Mostly from the Crab Meadow Beach here on Long Island, but the Alaska contact was mobile!   A new addition to the collection is an Atlas 210X HF rig.  This was a holiday present from my better half.  After a couple of months of just listening, I finally put up a 35 foot random wire, and picked up an MFJ 941-D VersaTuner so that I could try and transmit.  It’s very close quarters where we live, so I’m limited in antenna choices, and have to worry about disturbing the neighbors (well, any more than they are already disturbed/disturbing).  I found out earlier in the week, that the setup seems to be very functional on 20 meters, and have talked to Mexico, and Florida so far.  I’m hoping for some good 10 and 15 conditions this weekend so that I can try it out up there.  I’m going to add a counterpoise to the setup and see if it helps me tune up on 40.  80 is out of the question for now, as I seem to obliterate my TV speakers and KD2CHE’s computer monitor when I even try to tune up.  My 5-cent 2 meter dipole has also been working well.  I’ll cover that in a later post.

Transmitter hunting has been pretty good, with the XYL and I usually finding the transmitter quickly, and rarely last.  What’s interesting about that is we are the only team in our hunting club that operates without a doppler.  I also will write a future post on our technique, which in our last hunt, guided us to the bunny way ahead of our technologically superior friends.  Unfortunately, as we arrived at the site, I assumed that we might have been wrong, due to the fact that there were no other cars from the hunters present.  Next time I won’t put my assumptions before my instincts.  In the end, KD2CHE was the one that actually found the box, by using her eyes, while a bunch of us wandered around the woods with our equipment.

That’s all for now.  Maybe I’ll catch one of you on HF this weekend.  73’s !

–Neil, W2NDG

Magnum 257 (Radio Shack HTX-10)

I was sitting in the living room Saturday morning, turned my Magnum-257 10 meter rig on, and spun the dial to see if there was any activity.  To my surprise, there was.  Now, this is the older version of the 257, which makes it basically a RS HTX-10.  25 Watts on USB, and minimal features.  Connected to the Magnum is a very simple wire antenna, thrown into a tree close to the apartment, and a counterpoise out on the roof.  I heard IK6CWQ calling from Italy.  I picked up the mic, and responded, not expecting to be heard, and was surprised when he acknowledged. Not bad for this meatball setup I have.  I tried another Italian station I heard calling, but at that point news of the opening caused a bit of a pileup, which I just couldn’t dig my way through with the Magnum.  Still, I was pleased with the one contact.  The opening dropped out pretty soon after that.

My first HF contact ever was on that radio.  Back in January, when I first bought it, I drove to the South Shore here on Long Island and parked near the ocean.  Using the Magnum with a modified 11 meter whip, my first contact was with France, followed by a 10 minute rag-chew with a ham in New Mexico.  I wish every other new ham such good luck!  Since that day, I have made 30 additional contacts on that rig.  Usually from near the highest point on Long Island (a whopping 400 feet AMSL!), or near the ocean.  I’m definitely keeping the Magnum.  No matter what else I invest in, it has sentimental value now.

Sony ICF-2010

I’ve owned many of the classic shortwave receivers throughout the roughly 40 years that I have been a SWL.  Most of these I passed on to friends and relatives, while others were sold at hamfests, and on eBay.  I know that my beloved Panasonic RF-2200, is still used by my sister-in-law Alice.  My late brother Paul kept it prominently displayed on the counter for years.  My Sony ICF-6500 lives in Wisconsin, in the hands of a good friend that wanted to get in to shortwave listening.  Others, I’m not so sure as to the whereabouts, but hopefully they are still in use (with exception given to my National HRO-60 which I know was lost in a flood).

Of all of these, the one I frequently regret selling was my Sony ICF-2010.  The 2010 is still considered to be one of the best portable shortwave receivers around, and rivals many tabletops.  I sold mine on eBay during what we’ll call a dark time  in my life a number of years back.  I purchased the 2010 new at Gilfer Shortwave in NJ, in-person.  Now, as I see working examples sell for upwards of $350 on eBay, I have relegated the replacement of this radio to a status of someday, along with several other things that I want but do not need at the moment.  It would be a nice addition to my collection though, considering it is a great receiver.  It has a synchronous detector, separate USB/LSB modes, and 100Hz resolution, and portability.

Last week while watching new postings on eBay I saw one come up.  This example was listed as for parts or not working.  Upon reading the description, I noticed that the seller indicated the radio to be completely dead.  Now, in the world of radio repair, completely dead is usually better than many other states of being.  Especially in the case of the 2010, which is known to have battery compartment issues.  Anyway, I grabbed the radio immediately for a VERY reasonable price.  It arrived last night, and as I suspected, the problem was battery compartment related.  The 2010 runs on 3 D-cells, and 2 AA-cells.  The AA cells are listed as the computer batteries.  One thing about the 2010:  If you want to run it on AC power alone, you still HAVE TO have the AA-cells in place.  One of the plastic supports for the AA battery contacts had broken from the housing.  It is still held in place with a ribbon-

sized piece of plastic though, causing it to tilt at an angle back and forth like a loose tooth.  I temporarily fixed it with a piece of compressed foam and some plastic tubing.  The radio works great!  Better I think than my early example from years ago.  I have a couple of questions for the radio community though.First of all, what should I glue the AA-cell support back in place with?  I would try crazy-glue (or any generic cyanoacrylate), but I know that it will sometimes react with some commercial plastics, making the problem even worse.  I was thinking of using Gorilla Glue, but I would need to devise a clamping method.  I know some of you out there have dealt with such things before.  What do you use?

Second, the radio arrived with a loop antenna of some kind.  I have put pictures below.  It is approximately 21 inches long, made from PVC pipe with two endcaps.  On one end is an F connector and on the other end, an eye-hook.  I scrounged in my adapters and was able to hook it up.  It definitely improved reception on a few bands.  Has anyone seen one of these before?  Is it a commercial product, or homebrew?  What is the bandwidth?  And, if no one knows, what is the best method for determining its properties?  Feel free to answer in the comments.