Posts Tagged ‘home-brew’

GQRP / Kanga receiver

I was sent a kit this week by Kanga UK, who supplied me a new regen receiver. The kit in question makes its debut at the GQRP convention at Rishworth UK this week. Its appearance is marked by the annual buildathon.

The buildathon is a great way for anyone who has an interest in electronics, radio or has indeed has no experience in construction, build a kit and walk away with a working radio. The step by step guide we supply with the kits allows easy installation of the components and instant gratification.

I wrote the instructions for this kit and whilst doing so, I managed to video the whole build. The video is sped up, but the build actually took about 2 hours, not rushing and includes the videoing & taking pictures.


GQRP / Kanga receiver

I was sent a kit this week by Kanga UK, who supplied me a new regen receiver. The kit in question makes its debut at the GQRP convention at Rishworth UK this week. Its appearance is marked by the annual buildathon.

The buildathon is a great way for anyone who has an interest in electronics, radio or has indeed has no experience in construction, build a kit and walk away with a working radio. The step by step guide we supply with the kits allows easy installation of the components and instant gratification.

I wrote the instructions for this kit and whilst doing so, I managed to video the whole build. The video is sped up, but the build actually took about 2 hours, not rushing and includes the videoing & taking pictures.


Surface mount soldering

If, like me, you have had an irrational fear of surface mount devices for some time, you will be glad to know its not as bad as you may think. I recently started working with SMD and while I suffer from shaky hands and have poor eyesight, its actually quite a methodical process and not as fiddly as you would think.

I created a 2 part video on SMD soldering using a hot air (reflow) station and using solder paste. In this video I created a QRP dummy load which is a great introduction into Surface Mount Components and at a great price of £5.95 available from Kanga Products


Surface mount soldering

If, like me, you have had an irrational fear of surface mount devices for some time, you will be glad to know its not as bad as you may think. I recently started working with SMD and while I suffer from shaky hands and have poor eyesight, its actually quite a methodical process and not as fiddly as you would think.

I created a 2 part video on SMD soldering using a hot air (reflow) station and using solder paste. In this video I created a QRP dummy load which is a great introduction into Surface Mount Components and at a great price of £5.95 available from Kanga Products


Acorn II – Buildathon instructions

For those who have not seen the Arcorn II SDR kit, you can now purchase the complete kit for just £29.95 from www.kanga-products.co.uk The kit is an excellent entry into SDR receivers and we will be featuring this kit as a a part of the 2015 buildathon at the RSGB convention.

To aide the construction, I have created a set of instructions that may help with anyone who is building this little kit. You can download the PDF here,  There are significantly more pages than the Kanga instructions, but for a group construction project we find that lots of space and easy to follow instructions are a great help.

And if you haven't seen the construction video - here it is again.





Acorn II – Buildathon instructions

For those who have not seen the Arcorn II SDR kit, you can now purchase the complete kit for just £29.95 from www.kanga-products.co.uk The kit is an excellent entry into SDR receivers and we will be featuring this kit as a a part of the 2015 buildathon at the RSGB convention.

To aide the construction, I have created a set of instructions that may help with anyone who is building this little kit. You can download the PDF here,  There are significantly more pages than the Kanga instructions, but for a group construction project we find that lots of space and easy to follow instructions are a great help.

And if you haven't seen the construction video - here it is again.





Arduino Morse Tutor – Update

Its quite humbling really. Ive had this blog now for a number of years. I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. I love the concept of sharing my experiences, failures and successes with who ever stumbles across the blog. But mostly only a couple of entries get found and commented on. Namely my MQ26SR antenna posts are the most popular entries on this blog and I get about 1 email a month asking very specific questions.

That all changed this week. With the addition of my latest Arduino project. All of a sudden and quite literally overnight – the traffic to this blog skyrocketed. My inbox was awash of emails asking questions, my twitter feed was stacked with retweets and favorites of this circuit.  I seem to have struck a chord with many folks who, like me, were looking for a Morse Tutor, but don’t want to sit in front of a PC all day.

I’ve had some really wonderful feedback. I have been offered Crowd funding, beta testers and asked if I can supply more information. So I hope this entry can help with my plans for my Morse Tutor version 2, So here are some headlines for you all.


  1. I am making a kit. I have this in hand and a PCB design is on the screen right now.
  2. This will be launched as soon as I have figured out some minor gremlins.
  3. There will be added functionality. And some really cool features too – watch this space.
  4. The Sketch I have created so far is only a fraction of what is on offer. (plus also a lot of fixes have been included in the Version 2 build)
  5. Below are 2 drawings – 1 Schematic, 1 Breadboard.  This will support Version 1.01 of the code.

Version 2 will include an Audio Amp, an SD card and proper switching logic (either a rotary encoder, or latch chip) four new modes of training and all ready as either a pre assembled kit or kit of parts for you to build & box yourself. And trust me on this, it wont be expensive either.




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