The Dummyloads

Where ham brains come to fry

Where ham brains come to fry

QRP

Tuna Tin 2 Finished

As you may remember I left you at a metal can with a hole cut out to an incorrect size and then mashed over.  You may also remember that there were a few components that I needed to acquire to complete the kit.  While I definitely had a stock of BNC panel mounts, I did not have a supply of SPDT switches.  This involved me scouring

the interwebs looking for inexpensive, panel mount, SPDT switches.  I ultimately chose to order from danssmallpartsandkits.net.  If you are thinking that this guy must be a real niche market seller and cater to his customers. . . You’d be 50% right. . . It’s definitely a niche market!  From what I can gather he is a nice guy, but he has rules that must be followed.  Read carefully and follow the instructions.  I’ve never had a problem.  I also always order a bunch of other random parts I don’t “need”, but hey. . . next time when I need an NPO bypass cap, I have a stock of them.  This is a practice that was recommended to me by an elmer some years ago.  It’s why I have parts on hand. . . not always enough, but sometimes enough and sometimes enough to make it inexpensive to order a couple other parts.  Get what you need plus 2-3 items you don’t need, but are generally speaking useful.

So a few weeks pass by and a boring, worn package shows up.  In it are my parts.  They smell as if they have been living in a smokers attic for at least a decade, but they seem to pass the test of working and that is all I need!  The next step is getting the case ready for the board.  I installed a coaxial power jack from my stash, 2 BNC panel mounts, and the SPDT switch.  I choose to wire up all of the internal components so that when I am ready to connect the board there is little work to be done.

This is where I made my second mistake of the build.  If you follow the manual, you will build the transmitter.  Then when you are done they will give you some options to improve the performance.  I read the manual in advance and had opted to install the circuit for preventing chirp ahead of time.  IF one were to build this radio and intend to build it with this mod installed from the beginning, one would not burn themselves with a soldering iron while trying to put an electrolytic capacitor between the coaxial power and a ground lug on a BNC ground lug because that capacitor is NOT necessary assuming the anti-chirp mod is installed. The joys of homebrew!

Anyway. . . I had the can wired up and it was time to start on the board.  The manual has great step by step instructions.  I won’t belabor them other than to say that in the last step, they have you run a capacitor between two terminals near an inductor on the bottom of the board.  If you read the manual in advance you would choose to put the capacitor in before the inductor.  I think it looks nicer and is less likely to short out any traces.  It also fits through the hole just fine if you put it in ahead of time and just bend it over out-of-the-way.

The last step was to build up the home-brew anti chirp mod.  It’s a simple circuit and I had all the parts on hand thanks to some prior orders from kitsandparts.com.  See how my advice from earlier has paid off in this build!  If I had it to do over again, I would use fewer of the manhattan pads.  I laid it out exactly as the schematic showed, but you really only need about 5 islands.

The rest of the build was uneventful.  I made a short video to show the first smoke test, but unfortunately I must have hit the slow motion button as the video is completely unwatchable and 20 minutes long for something that took about 2 minutes.  You’ll have to just enjoy the pictures.  It does work and I hope to make an actual contact at some point when the bands are cooperative!

More projects are in the works.  Stay Tuned!

KF5RY

 

 

Flight of the Bumblebees

The FOBB is a contest put on by the Adventure Radio Society.  These are the people who also host the spartan sprint once a month.  The idea is to get portable and operate your radio.  The FOBB and NJQRP Club Skeeter Hunt are the events that I actually learned radio doing!!  I’ll never forget the first contest I took part in, I worked Greg Lane N4KGL.  How he copied anything I sent and the fact I copied anything back is a miracle!  But. . . I still follow Greg on Google+ and we trade emails occasionally.  He has been a very helpful elmer over the years.  You’ll hear him in my video!  (This is actually just a bizarre coincidence!  I happened to hit record right before he responded to me.

JD (K5HH) has been showing me up by Vlogging.  I doubt I become a Vlogger, BUT. . . I did make a video of the contest and figured I would share with you.  Check it out, share with your friends.  Tell me what I can do to make it more useful for the upcoming Skeeter Hunt in the comments below!

 

Tuna Tin finished post coming soon!

KF5RY

 

The Tuna Tin 2 Build

Trying to figure out the center with the intent of cutting out and around

I mentioned previously that I had won a tuna tin 2 at a NORTEX QRP meeting.  Well, I’ve finally started building on it.  Step 1 is to read the manual.  I know. . . shocker. . .

The Manual is pretty straight forward, but I was surprised to learn that it doesn’t actually come with all the parts required to make a working transmitter.  You need your own antenna jacks, your own T/R switch, and not surprising. . . Your own tuna can.

For those of you unaware, my wife (KG5WCI) is a vegetarian.  Before we got married our prenuptial agreement consisted of this.

  1. I promise not to cook bacon or eat tuna in the house.
  2. She agrees to never have a dog that she carries in a purse.

Now. . . before we continue I think I need to address the elephant in the room.  Many people feel like I made a poor bargain.  But lets be real. . . when I got married my diet consisted of frozen Tony’s pizzas, Burger King (nearest fast food), and Jersey Mike’s (around the corner from work).  So its not like I was cooking a lot of bacon.

Back to radio!

You can see I left an edge which in retrospect was an error.

As you can see, its not like I can run out to the store and buy a can of tuna.  Consuming it at home is not in the cards and consuming it at work, well. . . thats complicated.  Primarily because I’ve not made my own lunch in at least a decade and given rule number one exists it’s not like the YL is going to make it.

Luckily. . .

I have friends.  A friend at work was listening to my dilemma and rather than running scared, as one should do. . . she mentioned that the next time she makes tuna casserole she will bring me the empty can and even rinse it out. (So as not to even come close to rule number one. #blessed)  This actually worked out incredibly conveniently as this friend and her husband are expecting now and canned tuna is expressly not permitted for expecting mothers.  Not to mention, she is likely to enact rule number one in her home at least for the next 90 days.  🙂

Chicken of the Sea topless and bent over

A week or two later a chicken of the sea tuna can wonders into my life and the adventure it seems is officially ready to start.  The first step was to map out the can and figure out the dimensions and how the top will fit mechanically.  The manual gives a couple of options, but I’m enamored with the concept of the full open can.  This means the bottom of the can needs to be cut out.

Here my friends is where I exhibit the first word in Amateur Radio.  What I should have done was put the PC board on top of the can and got a sense of where the hole in the can needed to be.  i.e. how big the finished hole should be.

THE tool for cutting metal

Instead. . . I tried to leave a little bit of the can so I could mount the PC board to the can.  Unfortunately after cutting the can out, I discovered that I couldn’t orient the board in a way that did NOT short out a trace.  In addition, the edge of the PCB will go right to the edge of the can no matter how big the hole is.  There is no need for “structure” to attach it to.

It was time to cut a bigger hole.  Unfortunately once I had a hole, it was nearly impossible to cut more metal with a nibbler.  It was just too flimsy and wouldn’t “bite” off, which means I just had to bend the metal over.  Not an ideal solution, but it worked.  We are off to a good start.  Hole is cut and its time to mount the hardware.

More to come soon. . .

 

KF5RY

Camping and Radio

Some friends and I decided to go on a camping trip recently. Camping in June, in Texas is generally NOT a great past time. BUT. . . My friend’s dad had passed away recently and we all felt like we should get together and enjoy nature. Much as his father had.

As with all camping trips, on my list of items to pack is a radio and an antenna. For this particular outing we were going to be at Huntsville State Park in Texas. Since I was the only amateur on the trip, I opted for a small footprint antenna and brought my Buddistick to pare with my KX2.

We arrived late in the day and were greeted with some interesting signs. . .

Like all good trips we had a lot of fun.  I managed to set up my buddistick and do a lot of CQing.  Unfortunately our location was not very favorable.  We were in a low spot and the antenna was vertically parallel and near a very tall tree.

I’m confident that some of my radiation went directly into cooking some of the grubs in the tree.  I called CQ for about 20-30 minutes the first night and managed to only work one station (XE1XR).  While he didn’t answer my CQ, I did work him.  I shut down for a couple hours and came back around midnight Central (0500 UTC) and called CQ again for about 1/2 hour on 30M.  Not a single spot.  Good SWR so I’m not sure what went wrong other than the location.  I did enjoy tuning around the band late at night.  I don’t do this much, but I heard an “F” Station and some “I” stations.  They obviously didn’t hear me, but it was fun to have a chance!

I forgot to take any pictures of my set up.  A couple of noteworthy things you would have seen in my picture. . . had I taken one.  The picnic tables at Huntsville State Park are extremely thick concrete tables.  I couldn’t get my clamp to open up big enough to go around any part of the table in order to mount the antenna.  I was also very close to the water and therefore not very high.  So I mounted the antenna to a handicap railing at the base (read bottom) of the stairs up to the vehicles.  Again. . . not a great location, but it is what I could do with what I had. . . Next time I’ll bring the PPD.  There is plenty of room in most campsites to set that up.

Since the bands were not hopping I opted not to do radio and instead went fishing on the 2nd night.  Where I ran into this guy. . .

As you can see I made it home to type this, so it all ended OK. I’ve never seen one in the wild and never dreamed I would be so close to one in the wild.

KF5RY

QRP From the Park

KF5RY (logging) K5JTL (double checking me) and NE5DL (operating)

My favorite radio operating activity is to operate outdoors.  Once a month I try to gather a group of hams together here in the Duncanville, Texas area.  I really have two objectives.  One is to encourage other amateurs to get out and use their gear and the other is to show off our hobby to complete strangers.  We were able to accomplish both objectives in February.

In the picture you see Dave Lear (NE5DL) Justin Long (K5JTL) and Steve  (not pictured is Steve Edmonds (KZ5MSE) as he is taking the pictures).  Steve is visiting Justin and his family and thought it might be fun to see what we consider to be fun.

The forecast was not optimal for radio operation.  Lots of rain!  BUT. . . it looked like we would have a short window for operating.  Justin and I arrived first and set up my buddistick.  I was looking to have a quick put up and take down antenna as the rain was an unknown!

When Dave arrived he opted for a much fuller sized vertical.  Dave uses a custom mount plate with a Wolf River Coil and a 17′ MFJ Whip.  He sets this all on top of an inexpensive tripod mount.  He has 4 radials that are precut to the band and hangs them off of plastic electric fence posts.

NE5DL set ups his radial

 

About 1/2 way through Dave’s set up the skies opened up.  I took down all my gear and ran for the car!  3 minutes later the rain stopped and life was normal again.  Dave never stopped setting up.

Dave was testing a slight variation on his antenna and we had a little trouble getting everything dialed in correctly.  Fortunately between everyone on hand we had enough tools to make it happen.  In the middle of all this a man starts shouting at us.  I turned around to see a pick up truck parked in the middle of a very narrow road.  Outside the truck and approaching us is a very large man in a cowboy hat shouting, “OK. . . You got my attention.  What are y’all doing? ? ? Are you talking to aliens?”

Fortunately Justin Long (K5JTL) came to the rescue on PR duty.  While that was ongoing Dave and I were able to get the antenna finished up and on the air.  We were able to operate for about an hour.  Dave made a couple of contacts while I logged.  The last contact we made was myself (KF5RY) and Don (VE4ESE).

Overall it was a great day.  If you find yourself in Dallas County and are interested in joining us let me know and I’ll get you the date, time, and location information.