Ham Radio Page
| I've been enjoying the hobby of ham radio since being
licensed
as WN5BDU in January, 1962 at the age of thirteen. I've enjoyed
many
facets of this diverse hobby over the years, but I remain mostly a CW
(Morse) operator. On the air activities include casual QSOs and
competitive events such as contesting and a bit of DX chasing.
Off the air, I'm building stuff or writing microprocessor code. I've lately spent a lot of time involved with a development in ham radio which emphasizes small, simple (usually) low powered radios, called the QRP movement. QRPers tend to use CW a lot and also like to build equipment from kits or from scratch. The technical side appeals to me. I sold the fine FT-1000 and purchased the K3 in early 2008. It's exciting to have a new transceiver. |
My Rig - Current Equipment
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History: My older radios and times
Technical stuff - my projects
| One-chip receiver | A 40 CW meter receiver using the TDA1073 AM radio chip |
| EFHW Antenna Matchers |
The end-fed half-wave antenna is enjoying popularity for portable
use due to its ease of erection and no-feedline design
Here are two matching circuits for the EFHW
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| Introduction to LTSpice (pdf) Introduction (Microsoft Word) Tutorial #1 Tutorial #2 |
LT Spice is a free circuit analysis program. It's easy to use but there
is the usual initial familiarization problem. The link at the left is a PDF
file of my introtuction and tutorial. Download from the link below:
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| Permeability (current) controlled oscillator | A simple circuit from EDN which varies the frequency of an oscillator by passing current through a toroid, changing its permeability by saturation. The result shows up in the frequency of the oscillator. |
| Amplifier to boost DDS output | I have an NJQRP DDS and another designed by K6ESE both of which put out a couple milliwatts of RF power. This circuit boosts that to about 5 watts for use as a QRP transmitter or to allow the DDS to drive a tube-type transmitter. |
| A 60 meter SSB transmitter | This is a 10 watt SSB transmitter I designed and presented at OzarkCon in Joplin in 2005. |
| A simple autodyne receiver | An interesting receiver that can lock to the station being received (such as WWV). |
| Thermostatic fan control for MFJ-4225MV P/S | A circuit to allow the fan in the MFJ-4225MV (or other) power supply to run only when needed, which quiets it down a lot. |
| Some mods to KD1JV Butterfly source for DDS | Steve Weber made his source code for the Atmel Butterfly demo board available for users to modify. I added the ability to toggle between the AD9850 and AD9851 versions of the NJQRP DDS boards plus the ability to use a rotary encoder for frequency control. |
| Crystal characterization and filter design | From a presentation I gave at OzarkCon in Joplin, Missouri in 2008 |
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