The Dummyloads

Where ham brains come to fry

Where ham brains come to fry

kits

Building an FM Radio Kit w/Kid

As promised a video of Amelia and I building her FM receiver. Funny enough she doesn’t listen to it nearly as much as she listens to her AM radio. AM radio I suppose has lots of drama what with all the politics.

Ham Gadgets Ultra Pico Keyer

As I mentioned in a previous post, Berkley decided she wanted to learn CW.  After having learned a few letters, I was pretty confident it was going to stick, but we needed to have a way for her to practice.  I have used the Ham Gadgets Ultra Pico Keyer for a few years on my HomeBrew 630M transmitter.  Disconnecting and reconnecting is super annoying, so I opted to get her one of her very own.

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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

 

 

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

Emtech ZM-2 Tuner Build

After buying a WSPRLite I decided I needed a QRP antenna tuner. I was first looking at the QRP Kits SOTA tuner, but after a recommendation I took a look at Emtech’s ZM-2. I looked at a couple others, but after reading a bunch of Eham.net Reviews, the ZM-2 looked to be the best choice for me. The ZM-2 comes as a relatively easy kit, so what follows are some pics of my build. I followed the instructions and the video advice from W5CYF.

Keep in mind, I’m not very good at soldering… yet, so be kind.

The Kit

Start by winding the toroids.

This was an easier process than I thought it was going to be. Even the little one, I was a bit concerned that I was going to snap the little wire, but it snugged up nicely. I gotta say, I don’t like soldering the heat removable coating on the little wire. I was never sure it was hot enough to melt and get a good connection. I also read the instructions wrong and didn’t leave enough red wire on the large toroid, and so had to create a pigtail for that end. There was plenty of wire in the kit, so that wasn’t a problem in the end.

Setting up the LED

I ended up having to go buy some helping hands and a head mount magnifier to do this part, which worked out for later parts as well. My eyes ain’t what they used to be apparently.

Attaching the front face decal, after spraying 4 coats of Krylon.

Installing the Faceplate.

Here are the switches, connectors, and variable capacitors installed. If you build one of these, don’t attach the right poly cap knob until after you screw the faceplate into the box. The right-bottom screw ends up being under that knob by half a screw width.

 Final Components and wiring.

The area near the two main switches was a bit fiddly and mine looks ugly, but there’s no shorts.

Final Product

It seems to work, but there’s some issues I don’t understand yet. I put out an email to Emtech, but never got a reply. I’ll try calling them. Y’all can expect a video of it in action in the very near future.