AmateurRadio.com

There’s been a bit of radio silence over the last 2 weeks. mainly because I’ve not been at home. We spent Christmas and new year up in Scotland and then I started a new job last week away was away from home for 3 days. Hence the quiet conditions. I prefer not to broadcast that I’m away until after the event, just in case.

I did have a couple of hours listening in for the Christmas cumulative but only worked a couple of stations that were very close. Apart from that Santa dig bring me a new antenna for 6m, which was interesting on the way home (My journey down was spent hoping that the cardboard tube would stay in tact, despite torrential rain). This has prompted me to have a rethink about my shack and what kit is going where, what I need and what I can sell on. Plenty to think about.

I hope Santa was good to you and here’s wishing everyone an active new year.

But I’m getting closer to getting a PCB made. I’ve solved the issues with the drill files but have now got a new problem. The schematic has now been corrupted, meaning I’ll have to redo that. it shouldn’t take long but its a case of one step forward and two back at the moment. I really wanted to get this PCB order before Christmas but it may not make it. Still here’s a little shot of the Gerber files rendered as a pcb by one of the online Gerber viewers called Mayhew Labs. Its nice to see it almost in the flesh as it adds another check to the process before I go ahead and spend money on (hopefully not) practice boards.

One day I’m just going to have to lump it and press the button. There are only so many checks you can do but I’ve had a check by our local homebrew superhero Kevin, M0KHZ and his eye is far better than mine.

Excuse me whilst I explode

For the past few weeks I have been designing a simple circuit for my Arduino clock. Its the first PCB I have designed and I’ve needed a bit of help from a few sources to get it right. All that help has been really welcome.

One thing just isn’t happening for me though. Exporting the Eagle files for manufacturing. Namely the drill file part of it. The design has been done in Eagle, because it has a number of libraries of commonly used parts to help numpties like me design stuff. It also has a function to produce the gerber files so your PCB can be manufactured. But the drill file bit just isn’t happening for me. Countless hours googling the answer have come up empty so I’m going to have to think of a way round it.

This should be the easiest bit, maybe it is in other packages but its just not doing it in Eagle. I think I will have to take a break from it for a while as it is starting to wind me up.

Lamco have added a new product to their range. A Cobwebb antenna. It goes under the name of a MyHam HF-7B and it is specified as an antenna with a useful range of 20/17/15/12/10/6/4m bands.

I noticed this in the latest Practical Wireless and thought I’d email a copy to Mike Corke, ZS1RJQ who has now made 6 of these. We are both users of the Cobwebb but both of us have homebrewed versions. I was interested to see how much his cost to make and like me, he spent about £40 making each of his. Mine  was a little dearer on account of me making a few experiments along the way. We both had a little chuckle at the cost of this commercial version at £249.

If you need an HF antenna then it seems that the commercial versions are very expensive and homebrew antennas cost a bit in time but a lot less in terms of £. I buy my bits and pieces from all sorts of places but AMTools / Spratreader on eBay has all the bits you need for the hardware for a much lower price. If you don’t see what you need then just email him and I’m sure he’ll be able to help.

If homebrew isn’t your thing then there isn’t much of an option. But it seems it’ll cost you for a simple piece of hardware. I’m sure if I were to every build my own rig it’ll look like a dogs breakfast and perform in a similar fashion but simple bits of wire shouldn’t cost that much.

(Just to clarify I’m not singling out any one supplier, but just observing that off the shelf stuff can cost a fortune compared to home made stuff.)

I’ve spent a bit of time over the last day or so putting together a schematic for my Arduino / MSF60Khz shack clock. The previous iteration has been sat on my desk in breadboard form doing exactly what it should but a bit ugly.

I’ve designed the schematic on Eagle and made a bit of progress with support from the Arduino forums and think I’m nearly there. The eventual aim is for the club to have another option for those looking for a bit of soldering for the next step in their licence, or just as a simple thing for the shack.

I hadn’t appreciated how long it would take to get the spaghetti on the paper and I’m sure there’ll be more efficient ways to do it but here’s my first attempt after considerable help from the forums.

If you’re interested there are more details on the project pages which will be updated in due course.

I’m sure there are those who could do this in a few minutes, but, for the more challenged like myself it has been quite a steep curve to climb but a worthwhile one. It’ll be lovely to get something finished before the end of the month but we’ll see how well it goes. I’m struggling a bit with the PCB with little things like mounting holes and getting the correct drill size / grid.

If anyone fancies being a checker for this and the board then I’m always happy to accept guidance.

Whoever spots all the errors first wins a prize!

Can I mention the ‘C’ word?

I mean contests. I refuse to call it sport radio as to me a sport involves sweating and physical discomfort. Sitting in front of a radio shouldn’t be uncomfortable. If it is you may need a new chair.Yes, there’s an element of competition, but that’s also true for growing the largest marrow. Anyway on to the point of this post.

Today was a first for me, the RSGB 144Mhz AFS contest was on and I thought I’d give away a few points, so instead of plonking the 5 ele yagi in the loft and leaving it in one place I put in on the end of my aluminium telescopic (wobble-o-matic) mast. The results were never going to be exceptional given I seem to live underground as far as rf is concerned but it was nice to give away a few points to those with higher real estate.

I’ve decided to give the UKAC contest a go as a ‘proper’ operator from a nearby hill and will use that kit with the FT-817 because I don’t have batteries for the IC-7000. If anyone is concerned if I’ve caught the contesting bug, I don’t think so, as today had most of the daylight spent at a local theatre and ‘A Muppet Christmas carol’. 200 kids, mince pies, snot and Marmite and someone dressed up as what looked like the Easter bunny with stick on horns. Both our kids were fairly sure it was Rudolph so that’s good.

QRB was Devon for me today, which was pleasing. All with 50w and a small yagi on the end of a pole. Lets see if I can improve on Tuesday night. Glad to see I’m firmly rooted to the bottom of the table though.

The source of all my Faros problems…..The netbook itself. I hadn’t actually checked the obvious and that was what it was. The noise generated by the netbook was stopping it from finding signals in all the noise. Hence the 100% QSB. When I disconnected and unplugged everything the noise level dropped massively and that was the end of the problem.

Trouble is I sort of need that to run the program. Oh well, I suppose I can try and run it under wine with Linux and put it on the RPI as that makes little or no noise. I feel some hours being used up ahead!