WDØDXD

I am in the process of upgrading the ham shack.  I collected a variety of different rigs over the years, most of them vintage.  A few months back, I was looking around the Office/Shack and realized they took up a lot of room and I hadn’t turned most of them on in over a year.

So I started to sell off most of the vintage stuff.  I got rid of my Heathkit SB-104, and my SB-200 amp.  I have couple of  old Kenwood Hybrids left to go and a couple of HW-101’s that I plan to sell yet.

Then the other day I realized that I always wanted some modern Kenwood equipment.  So I found a TS-790A on ebay and I just got a TS-590S.  So as soon as I get them setup, I will have my Kenwood shack.  Now I need to sell my Icom 746pro.  The Motorola Spectras that I have been using for UHF and VHF will get put in my Scout that I am restoring.

Now I need to redesign the shack so that it is not so cramped and I have a bench area.  I think that is what I will do for Father’s Day.

Just purchased a used Bencher Butternut HF5B 5 band Butterfly beam Antenna off of ebay.  Now I just need to get a good rotor and I will be set.

The beam needs a little work so I will post some pictures as I go along.  Excited to try out some targeted QSO’s.

Just completed Phase 10 of my G59 build.  This is the Mic Pre-amp part.  Not much to report on this one other than a couple of parts that are not marked well on the circuit board.  Check the BOM and make sure you get everything installed correctly.

Only two more steps and the main transceiver will be done.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a post about needing to build a balun to use with my loop.   I am trying to do more remote operation, and obviously with a manual tuner it makes it difficult.   The manual tuner has a built in balun that allows me to use my loop with dual rg-6 coax.

I did a little research and found that many ham’s reccomended Understanding, Building, and Using Baluns and Ununs by Jerry Sevick, W2FMI.   I went on Ebay and found a copy for 49.00 and purchased it using Buy Now.  Well long story short, I never did receive the copy and after about 3 or 4 weeks Ebay refunded my money since the seller wouldn’t respond to my or their messages.

So I went back on Ebay and no copies were listed this time.   I checked Amazon and several people had copies, but most started at $150.00 or more.  So I went back and checked.  It was originally available from CQ magazine.   I went to their website and lo and behold, they just got in a new printing of the book.   So for $19.95 plus shipping you can purchase a brand new copy of it here.

I have my reading set out for me the next couple of nights.  I will let you know what I learn and more importantly what I build.

In this Phase you construct the CW Monitor.  I am not active in CW now, but someday I want to brush up my CW skills, so it is nice the G59 includes this in the kit.

It is a pretty straight forward part of the kit and there isn’t anything special about its construction.  It should be an easy step.  Unless you are Allen.

I installed the resistors, capacitors and connectors without a problem.  Then I installed the IC’s.  That’s when I made the first mistake.  It was late, I was tired, yada, yada yada.  I put the 741 IC’s in the wrong spots.  Spent a half hour getting them back off the board.  I broke a couple of pins in each one, but at least I didn’t lift any pads up.  Long story short, I was able to get them soldered back into the correct places.  I had to solder the broken pins from the top, but they all seemed fine.

Last step was to make a couple of cables.  I was starting to dread making these, but I think I finally have a good system setup.  Bruce KF1Z told me he would just crimp the end of them to the wire and solder them.  I started to use my Helping Magnifier to hold them in place and solder them.  Then I would bend the crimps and push them into the holders, no crimping tool required.

So on to testing the CW Monitor.  I did as the website instructed and I got a tone, but it was more like a buzz.  I did a little research on the mailing list and found a message that said to use a jumper in KS1M.  Tried that and now I got at least a somewhat decent CW tone.  I researched the list further and found it was reccomended that you use a 2.8k resistor instead of the jumber.  I had a 2.7k 1/8 watt resistor so I tried that and was satisified with the results.

Then I tried to adjust the volume of the tone.  You are supposed to adjust R15M to set the volume.  I tried that but after several turns it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.  I posted a message on the Yahoo List, but before anyone responded, I backed R15M way out and then I could hear a change in the volume level.  apparently I turned it in too far and I was afraid to back it out too far, but that is what did the trick.

Then I went on to check the Iambic Keyer.  The trick here is you have to have GDSR set to CW and you have to have clicked on the start button.  I did that and now I have nice dits and dashes.  I don’t have a keyer, so I just used a stereo audio cable and shorted the ends to test it out.

Next on to Phase 9 the Transmitter.

In Phase 6 you build the Input-Output HP-LP Filters, antennuator and preamplifier.  A new skill to master is making an inductor by putting 5 turns on a 3mm drill bit.  I didn’t have a 3mm so I just used a 7/64ths drill bit.

You solder all the relays in at this time and a few more SMD components.  I did a better job of doing the SMD work this time, I sometimes get better with practice.

The on thing I struggled with is making the cables.  I wasted quite a few crimp on connectors and then made the cable too short.  I will have to go back and build a new one later.

The voltage checked out and I was able to see a pretty good spike in reception when I enabled the RF Preamp.  So for now I think I am on my way.

Also, take a look at NØJRJ’s blog.  He is also building one and has documented it in video.

This is the receiver build.  Nothing too unusual.  You finish soldering in a couple of IC’s that are on the board when you get it.  Not sure why they are shipped that way when the others aren’t, but so be it.

There is also some more SMD soldering.  I am getting a better hang of that.  Heat the pads and then let the solder flow under the pins.  I used an angled needle nosed pliers to hold the microscopic capacitor down on the board.  First I put a little solder on one of the pads on the PC board and then heated it up and slide the capacitor into it.  If I didn’t do it that way, I found that they would spring up vertically when you soldered them on one side.

You add the capacitors, resistors, etc.  The hardest part is making two wire cable that is required in this step.  I have a crimper for these types of cables, but it was still a pain.  I crimp them and then solder them for insurance.  The kit comes supplied with a 15 wire ribbon cable that you have to split and then cut to length.

I got everything soldered in and started to do the checks.  The voltage checks on IC1R came out fine.  I went on to IC2R and IC3R and the voltage was 6.8v on some of the pins instead of the suggested 5.05v.  I double, triple checked my soldering.  Found one capacitor that wasn’t soldered well and rechecked.  Still the same.  I then rechecked to make sure that I installed the correct components.

Here is where I found out something that will help me as I go along in construction of the kit.  Not all the parts are listed in the steps on the web page.  When I checked the BOM (Bill of Materials)  I found some capacitors that were not installed.  I went back and installed them thinking that that may be my problem.  Still the voltage was off.  At least I know to check off the components in the BOM as I go along.

I then went and searched the Yahoo Group and found someone that had the same problem as I did.  In fact he was at the same step at the same time as me.  After posting the questions, we were assured that the voltage we were seeing was ok and we could proceed.

The next step was to hook it up and see what we heard.  I hooked up my E-MU 0202 and off we went.  I spent the better part of two hours today figuring out how to use the GSDR software.  I finally think I have a basic grasp of it.  I was able to adjust the receiver to reject the unwanted image and was able to listen to a conversation using SSB mode on 20m.  I did find out that I have the cable wired backwards for the E-MU0202, so for now I am just having the software reverse the inputs.

All for now till Phase 6

If you follow this blog (who wouldn’t 🙂 ).  You have probably figured out I am working on another kit.

In January, I started on a Genesis G59 MK2 build.  I had been looking at them for about a year and finally joined their Yahoo Group.   Hank –  KR7X had one that he hadn’t started and didn’t have time to work on due to job responsibilities, so I purchased his kit.

I got it in about three days and like a kid at Christmas, I tore into it.  The Genesis kits are a little different the the DzKit, mostly on how they come packaged.  The DzKit is like the old Heathkit’s.  The parts of each build are packaged together in modules that match the chapter of the build.

The Genesis kits are shipped with the parts pretty much in one bag and the instructions are on the website and get updated as changes are made to the build procedure.  It’s a little more time consuming, but completely do-able.  I got a large cupcake pan from the XYL and sorted the parts by type which helped a lot.

I quickly got through phase one with no problems.  Then I went on to phase two and at the end while doing the final testing, I could not get the oscillator to function.  I messed with it for a few hours and then had to set it aside to get some business projects down and a few other things in the Shack.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago.  It started working on it again.  I still couldn’t get the oscillator to function.  Finally, even though I knew better, I went ahead and completed phase three thinking it my be my test equipment.  Well what do you know, I couldn’t get the PC to recognize the USB device when I hooked it up.

I made several puzzling posts to the Yahoo Group and Bruce KF1Z started helping me with it.  Long Story short, I had done a bad job of soldering the IC Socket for the micro-controller to the board.  Bruce who has a good set of SMD tools (I assume a re-flow oven) replaced the socket for me and tidied up a couple of other things for me.  Can’t say enough about his service to the Genesis community.

So now that I have the board back in my hot little hands, I will let you know how the rest of the build goes.  I promise to practice better soldering techniques and I will pass on some resources that I found on doing SMD soldering.

I just can’t seem to help myself.  I just keep taking on projects.  Hopefully some of my older one’s will come together before I completely drown or they have to haul me away in a straight jacket.

Last fall during college football season, we had to be away for a weekend when my Cornhuskers were on tv.  We have 3 VCR’s in the house, but I don’t think more than one works.  So I looked around, running a computer business, I have lots of them laying around.  I even had a couple of TV tuner cards sitting on the shelf that we took out of long dead Windows Multimedia PC’s.

So I thought what the heck let’s build a DVR.  I did a little research and came upon Mythtv and looking further I found mythbuntu which is a Ubuntu distribution with Mythtv already rolled into the distribution.

So I took an old HP PC I had laying around with 1GB of ram and added a 1TB hard drive and a couple of  Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 cards in it and viola, we had a combo front end/back end DVR.  We put that in the basement and then took another old HP pc and built just a front end that I put in the living room.

Well it went over real well and the kids really love it.  Problem is the old PC that I used for the front end is big, bulky and noisy.  So this evening, the XYL was trying to clean up in that room and finally had enough.  I went in and discussed it with her and offered to build something new in a smaller size.

So I spent and hour or two researching and finally decided on a Shuttle XS35GT-804 It has 2gb of ram, a DVD Writter, 500GB HD and a dual core processor all in a what they call a 1 liter package.  I got it for about $369.00.  I added a wireless remote for another $20.00.  I will load mythbuntu up on it and we should be good.

See what happens when you just want to record a football game!

This is a project I completed last year that combines Amateur Radio and Wood Working.

I had some old wood that I took out of the back of the garage many years ago and hung onto to use in a project some day.  It was rough western yellow pine I believe.  So I took it and ran it through a planer I have and then used the joiner to straighten them up.  I then used a bisket jointer to join the boards together and finally used my table saw to cut them to the correct dimensions.

I put a roman ogee edge on the top and bottom and then finished it with some tung oil.  I took some rails off of a studio rack that Ron WØSTX gave me and put them in the console.

I mounted a duplexer on the back and a MFJ powerstrip on the back along with a terminal bar for gounding.

I will post some pictures as soon as I get my equipment back in it.  I have a couple of radios out for repair.

Overall, it works great and looks pretty good also.  Best of all I made it with 80% recycled material.