AmateurRadio.com

I’m enjoying experimentation with AREDN. Using off-the-shelf equipment, you can build a mesh IP network running in ham frequency allocations. Getting started is a bit tricky at the moment…I’ve joined the project team to help with some documentation and to do some release testing. Here’s a link to a Getting Started guide I’m working on.

If you’re interested in playing with mesh networks, take a look at the guide and let me know what you think!

Michael Brown, KG9DW, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Illinois, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

It's time for the surgery

Beware of other components

It was time to heat up the soldering iron, hold my breath and begin the surgery! First off you have to get to the P30 and P35 headers. Taking the radio apart is a very important step that close attention is required. Don't take short cuts, for example screws that are removed put them somewhere safe. When handling the rig use an anti static mat and wrist band. Finally when handling covers and boards be aware of fragile components, the last thing you want to do is damage components. Once the rig is apart I identify the components to be changed and made sure they really were P30 and P35. I then look at the parts Elecraft sent to me, last thing you want to do attempt to install an incorrect components. I now looked at the PC board and become familiar other components, wires or anything that I could damage when soldering. I have found in the past when concentrating on a very small section of a PC board you could at the same time place your very hot soldering iron close to sensitive comports and your not even be aware you are doing it. With my project today I had to move a wire that was close to P35 and I have to be aware of 2 components that

Front control head removed

Fume trap and soldering iron ready

are close to the pins on header P30. The first step is to cut the header pins right  the 90 degree bend and I am left with pins protruding from the board. With this completed I am left with pieces of pin sticking though the board that have to be removed. It's now time to setup my soldering station, fume extractor and solder feed station. What I do is hold the pin with my needle noise pliers and heat the solder pad and at the same time pull the pin out of the board. All but two pins came out which considering how many pins had to come out I was pleased with the results. I am left with solder pads to clean out (both top and bottom of board) and work on getting the 2 stuck pins out. The best tool to clean the solder pads is my Hakko 808 desoldering tool, it does a clean and fast job! With all the pads clean it's time to deal with the 2 remaining pins. I decided to trim the pins down close to the board and use the Hakko 808 to suck the pin out once it melted the solder. It worked great and I am now ready to install the new headers.

Trimming the header pins

The two stubborn pins

After using Hakko 808

Old out and new ready

The installation of the two headers is going to be part 3 of the post I have added some extra pic's or the removal of  P30 and P35
. 

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Mike, VE7SKA, AM/FM DXer from Saltspring Island, a nearby island here in the oceans of south-west BC, has sent me a description of his latest doings. Mike took advantage of the recent warm sunny weather to do some antenna work.

Mike calls his new antenna the SDSS (Super Drooper Sleuther Sloper)! It is 110' long, made of #18 wire and hangs from near the top of his 48' tower, drooping to a low sturdy Fir branch, about 10' high.

Using a section of Belden 9913 that was already on the tower (it used to feed his 6m array), Mike feeds the 'drooper' via a 9:1 balun / matching transformer... with the antenna feeding one leg of the transformer and the other side going to a section of #18 wire dropping straight down and terminated in a small ground system at the base of the tower.


The antenna runs ESE at 112 degrees by WNW at 292 degrees ... the bread and butter direction from SW Canada. For phasing and comparison, Mike uses a much lower wire, 30' long x 7' above ground level, running SE at 140 degrees by 320 degrees NW.

Mike reports: "An immediate test done after launch at 3pm logged a new 10 watt TIS on 1630kHz from just north of Marysville, WA on I-5 freeway. Little daytimer KBRD 680 Lacey, WA with 250 watts wasn't even audible on the Quantum QX Pro v3 amplified loop ... recent MW condx have been favorable ... a sunset tentative of 1460 KLTC N.Dakota (5kW); logging rarity 930 KTKN AK (1kW) on a very busy frequency ... new logging 1580 KKTS WY at 220 watts, phasing out pests KGAL and KMIK."

Mike goes on to say that phasing the new antenna against its smaller and lower little cousin allowed him to log several of the stations noted above, although the lower antenna picks up more noise.

This is really the key to any antenna system and one of the reasons we were always taught to get antennas as high as possible ... to get away from those nasty noise sources in or near the house.

With several antennas to play with now, Mike is looking forward to some interesting work on both the BCB, the beacon band and the lower SW bands but plans to get the antenna up much higher in some of his tall Firs before too long. As well, a high Low Noise Vertical is also on the 'to build' list.

So far the SDSS is proving the old myth wrong ... that antennas put up in anything less than the foulest of weather just don't work.
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Steve, G1KQH has pointed me to a link with 40m Pixie kits at incredible prices. At these prices there is no way the parts could be bought for less than the kit. The version I bought for $10 looks identical. All you need is a morse key, battery 40m antenna and walkman type headphones and you have a credible 40m CW transceiver. It really works.

Yoohoo Roger,

Now I back in front of the Pixie bargain game hunt, after finding the the best price!!!
http://www.banggood.com/DIY-Radio-40M-CW-Shortwave-Transmitter-Kit-Receiver-7_023-7_026MHz-p-973111.html
£2.89!!!!!!!
and if you buy more than 2 it gets cheaper!!

Not forgetting this includes free shipping. Unbelievable.

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

We will be shooting the next episode of AmateurLogic live this Friday night at 7:00 PM CDT, 000 UTC. Join us at www.live.amateurlogic.tv for the uncut version.

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

A couple of months ago my friend and Blogger G3XBM was into buying Pixie kits from China, he thought he had bought a bargain for the £7.00 he paid for the kit?  Shortly afterwards I found the kits at around a couple of Pounds lower than Roger had bought his for. But this was short lived, a week or so later Roger blogged that Andy Cutland had found them for £3.19 pence, this undercut my price yet again by nearly £1.50!!

Well the story continues!! I have now found the Pixie kits cheaper yet again!!! The complete kit as above (inc PCB components and Xtal), all for a penny pinching £2.89p ($4.30 US), and the more you buy the cheaper it gets! Oh yes I forgot the price "Includes" shipping!!

You could buy several kits without busting the bank, and put them on different Bands with Xtal and small mod of low pass filter changes.

Is this now the cheapest Transceiver kit  in the world, or can anyone find them cheaper still??




 
Steve, G1KQH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from England. Contact him at [email protected].

It was time to upgrade the interior lights in my 2004 Volvo. I got some lamps from Ebay specified as 42 mm LED Festoon, 80-85 lm, 12V. As many others have experienced also, they kept on glowing faintly after the door was closed. But when the ignition was turned off the lamps were completely off also, so there was no danger of draining the battery. Still this is not the way one expects lamps to behave.

One can get more expensive LED lamps which avoid this faint glow, “Canbus error free” seems to be the way to specify this. But mine were of the plain type, and the problem seems to be the leakage current in the FET switches that turn the lights on and off. It is tiny, but enough to give a voltage large enough to turn the LEDs on. An additional resistor load will lower the voltage below that threshold.

This requires a parallel resistor. Some have used 1k, others larger values. I did some trials and found that 10k worked well, while 22k didn’t completely eliminate the faint glow. The advantage is that 10k will only dissipate 18 mW @13.5 Volts, while the 1k will dissipate ten times that. Therefore I could use a small 1/4 W type. I soldered it on the back of the LED-board as the image shows.

The reason for switching to LED is not really to save energy as the savings aren’t that great anyway. The whiter and brighter light is more important as you can see in the image with the LED to the left and the old incandescent lamp to the right.

While at it, I just had to do some reverse engineering of the LED lamps. There seems to be four parallel groups of three series-connected LEDs (the three in a row) giving a forward voltage of about 8.3 V. They are driven via a resistor of 120 ohms in series with what seems to be a bridge rectifier since the lamps don’t depend on being connected in a particular way with respect to polarity.

In total it draws 18 mA @ 12V and 28 mA @ 13.5 V, i.e. 0.3-0.4 W, compared to 10 W for the bulb it replaced. This is not a very sophisticated way of constructing a LED lamp as there is no constant current regulation. The intensity will therefore vary with voltage, but hopefully it will work well here.

Sverre Holm, LA3ZA, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Norway. Contact him at [email protected].