AmateurRadio.com

The May issue of QST arrived in the mail today and an article about building a “fox” for hidden-transmitter hunting was included.  That brought back memories of a teenage project of mine that I had once thought of writing up for QST, but now just makes a good story for the blog.

The first (and only) handheld radio I’ve owned is an Alinco DJ-580T.  Like most HTs of a certain age, it has provision for an external (“speaker”) microphone.  The microphone input is a sub-miniature (3/32-inch, “2.5 mm”) stereo phone plug.  As a high school student, one of my passions was tinkering with a graphing calculator—the venerable Texas Instruments TI-85—do kids these days even use this stuff or have they gone the way of slide rules and nomograms?  The TI-85 offered the provision to link to a computer or another calculator through a similar sub-miniature stereo phone plug.

Well, one afternoon in probably 1997, I was sitting with the DJ-580T in one hand and the TI-85 in the other…and it hit me…I wonder if I can use the the TI-85 to drive the DJ-580T microphone input?

A few preliminaries are now in order.  Thanks to a helpful (and still operational, albeit now with a CMS and the attendant spam) web site called ticalc.org, a few friends and I had learned to load our TI-85s with third-party binary machine code programs with considerably faster execution times than the built-in scripting language.  This allowed us to play relatively powerful video games surreptitiously on a school-sanctioned platform…a tactic that worked well until the English teacher wisened up to the fact that the five students with their calculators out were not typing essays on them.  Not satisfied to just play games—although I did set a very high score in Tetris during Spanish class—I sought to harness the power of the Z80 microprocessor in the TI-85 for myself.  Recall that this was before widely-available and inexpensive microcontroller development systems like the PIC, Arduino, and AVR.

I gathered the tools and eventually managed to write some fairly sophisticated (given my utter lack of formal training in computing) software in Z80 assembly language, including a crude clone of Space Invaders and a crude adventure game I called “Kashmir.”  Maybe some screenshots or stories about them will come later.

But, for the story at hand, I learned how to manipulate the link port.  Fortunately, the sleeve was ground on both the TI-85 and the DJ-580T.  So, it was just a matter of tip and ring—one was audio and the other was PTT on the radio, and both were settable on the TI-85 for some kind of two-wire communication link.  So, I reasoned that I could write up a bit of assembly code that would key the PTT by pulling it low, then toggle the audio line back and forth at 500 Hz or so to generate a rough audio tone.  It worked!

This was an expensive, although trivially so since I had the hardware, way to build a hidden transmitter.  So, I modified the software to send my callsign in Morse code (using a look-up table) and stuffed the whole thing in a cigar box.  It was good fun for a few of us teenage boys.

And, for the interested, I found the original source code, which is sadly not well commented or dated.  But, it does have my old callsign (AA8UP) listed by the lookup table.

As I have commented before, I don’t generally review or endorse products on the blog.  However, I was organizing my aluminum/steel pile in the back yard recently and posed a question to the PVRC reflector about potential improvements to a 402BA-S that I uncovered.  One of the responses came from K4ZA, who is a well-known “tower-guy.”  (His blog is a pretty good read, too!)  I’ve been meaning to buy a copy of his book Antenna Towers for Radio Amateurs and I told him as much when I thanked him for his reply.  He offered a copy at a small discount from the cover price and I bought it.  It’s the second autographed ARRL book I have, the other being the 4th edition of ON4UN’s Low Band DXing, but I digress.

I’ve been at this whole radio thing for a few years now and have picked up a lot of the tricks.  Since most of what I know about towers comes from a high-school summer job in the two-way business, chatting with “The Good Reverend,” and installing HF research radars, Don’s book really filled in the gaps for me.  It is good…I read it cover-to-cover.

Don spent a career in video production before getting into the tower business full-time and it shows.  He knows the importance of telling the story to impart a trade.  He also includes candid stories from tower owners and workers explaining techniques and nearly-averted disasters from their own perspective.  Not only is it informative, the book entertains as well.

Antenna Towers for Radio Amateurs pretty much covers everything you need to know about planning, procuring, constructing, and maintaining your tower and antenna system—everything from how to evaluate the ubiquitous used tower sections to which tools and safety equipment to buy.  After reading it, you should be in a good position to understand how much of the tower-building process you are able to do yourself and how much to rely on local experts and professionals.  It is an excellent book and deserves a spot on the shelf of every ham who owns or dreams of owning a tower—and a few research radar scientists and engineers…

Saw this in my Google Reader at work and had to post.  Apply to work, ham radio, …?  It’s clearly an artist’s take and not an engineer’s.

Regular readers know that I enjoy a good deal on a good project and just such an opportunity presented itself again recently, this time in the form of an Icom IC-290A, which is a 10-watt 144-MHz all-mode transceiver whose age rivals my own.  It was from a large estate of much more valuable (think solid-state HF kilowatt, etc) items and the sellers were probably just happy to unload it since the display would come up at first but then disappear after a few minutes.  After cleaning a film of nicotine residue off of case and knobs, I set to work diagnosing the problem.

I tuned into the two beacons that I can always hear:  W3APL/B on 144.295 and WA1ZMS/B on 144.285.  They sounded just as good as they did on the TS-700, the IC-290H, and the borrowed FT-736R.  Then, the display went blank.  But, I was tuned into WA1ZMS and I could still hear it just fine.  Turning the main dial no longer changed the frequency.  When I turned the radio off and back on, a clicking noise emanated from the speaker above the background hiss, but there was no receive and no display.  Disconnecting the power supply and allowing the radio to sit for a few minutes restored normal operation…until the display blanked again.  This seemed to me to be a thermal problem, perhaps a bad capacitor or two as I had found in a IC-290H obtained on similar terms.

I popped the cover off of the radio and immediately noticed a few dry/cold/oxidized solder joints on the “Sensor Unit” board that sits on the top of the radio behind the front panel.

In each case, the bad joints were associated with electrolytic capacitors.  I desoldered all of them, cleaned the pads, and replaced the capacitors with new units.  It was somewhat of a miracle that I had all of them in my junkbox.

The problem persisted and for a while I thought it was getting worse.  For good measure, I went through all of the boards looking for leaky capacitors and cold solder joints and found nothing.  The “Troubleshooting” section of the Service Manual was an abject waste of pulp, but I did go through it.  The “PLL” (synthesizer) alignment section yielded no clues except that the reference oscillator (6.070 MHz nominally) level was a tad bit low in amplitude.  I heeded the warning of the manual that it had been carefully adjusted at the factory and should not need adjustment.  When the radio arrived, it was missing a number of case screws, suggesting that someone else had been inside.  So, who knows what the Golden Screwdriver hath wrought!

After reseating the row of connectors at the front of the “Logic/PLL” board just behind the radio’s front panel, I noticed that the problem seemed to have vanished.  It has not failed yet since doing that and replacing the Sensor board capacitors.  I hooked the radio up to a Bird Termaline wattmeter borrowed from W3APL and it made 10 watts on FM and CW.  The needle barely moved on a 10-watt full scale in USB.  So, I need to verify if it’s the microphone or the radio.  My new plan is to use this radio as the microwave IF and keep the more-powerful IC-290H for liaison and other portable purposes.  So, USB operation is critical.

So, like I always say, it seems that there are a lot of repairs that can be done just by cleaning things up.  I’m not totally satisfied with the technical explanation of why reseating those connectors seemed to have fixed the problem.  But, that is what happened and it is consistent with a lack of communication between the encoder/display unit in the front of the radio and the microprocessor in the logic unit.  It seems to be working for now!

Note (May 6th 2011):  See update here.

Good design by Javad, just like the arrow hidden between the ‘E’ and ‘x’ in FedEx.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am a fan of the WA5VJB “Cheap Yagis” as described by W0FMS.  One of the construction techniques W0FMS describes is the use of a “push nut” to secure elements to the boom.  I bought some push nuts from McMaster last week.  Since Mom and Dad were in town over the weekend, I took the opportunity brainstorm with Dad about methods and mechanisms for installing the push nuts.  McMaster would have happily sold me a tool for $60, but as usual, I was feeling thrifty.

And, this is what a push nut is.  They come in various sizes.  These are for 1/8-inch shafts (McMaster part number 94807A024).

Here is a jig with an oversized (3/16-inch hole) for installing push nuts:

With a push nut fitted:

Dad demonstrates operation of the jig (why yes, those are tower sections in the background):

Demonstrating how to do the other side, notice that the installed (top) push nut works as a positive stop:

And, a (nearly) finished 10-element Yagi for 903 MHz:

Happily, Sarah returned from Texas last night.  You don’t always know how much you miss your spouse until they’re not around.  But, she (and the baby—we’re expecting in July—very excited) is (are) home again!

She also brought the Trusted QSL-containing MacBook home safely and I uploaded my RTTY log to LoTW.  Got a whole bunch of matches!  So, the Triple Play award from the Maryland QTH is indeed coming along nicely:  CW 50/50 – PH 34/50 – DG 29/50.  Lots of easy ones still needed.  Also have 31/50 states on 160 (lacking easy confs like VA, for instance?!).  It’s also amusing to have more states on 2 meters than 15 meters.  I guess I should spend some time on the high bands.