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Weekly Propagation Summary – 2018 Feb 12 16:10 UTC

12 February 2018 | by Tomas NW7US | Leave a Comment (0)

Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2018 Feb 12 0146 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 05 – 11 February 2018

Solar activity was at very low levels on 05, 08-09 and 11 Feb while low levels were observed on 06-07 and 10 Feb. All of the period's activity originated from Region 2699 (S07, L=165, class/area Dai/240 on 10 Feb). The largest observed event was a C8 flare observed at 07/1347 UTC. No Earth-directed CME activity was detected during the period.

No proton events were observed at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at normal levels the entire period.

Geomagnetic field activity was at predominately quiet levels under a nominal solar wind regime. Isolated unsettled intervals were observed on 05, 09 and 10 Feb.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 12 February – 10 March 2018

Solar activity is expected to be at very low to low levels, with a chance for M-class activity, through 16 Feb due to the flare potential of Region 2699. Very low levels are expected from 17-28 Feb. A return to very low to low levels, with a chance for M-class activity, is possible from 01-10 Mar after the return of old Region 2699.

No proton events are expected at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at normal to moderate levels on 12-25 Feb, with a chance for high levels on 19 Feb, due to influence from recurrent CH HSSs. Mostly normal levels are anticipated on 26 Feb – 10 Mar.

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at quiet to unsettled levels on 15-18 Feb, 20-22 Feb and 04 Mar, with isolated active periods likely on 16 Feb. This activity is due to influence from recurrent CH HSSs. Mostly quiet conditions are expected for the remainder of the outlook period.

Don’t forget to visit our live space weather and radio propagation web site, at: http://SunSpotWatch.com/

Live Aurora mapping is at http://aurora.sunspotwatch.com/

If you are on Twitter, please follow these two users: 1. https://Twitter.com/NW7US 2. https://Twitter.com/hfradiospacewx

Check out the stunning view of our Sun in action, as seen during the last five years with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXN-MdoGM9g

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Totally Tubular – images

12 February 2018 | by Richard AA4OO | Leave a Comment (0)

The inside of a Heathkit HW-101 is too interesting not to photograph

List of tubes and their function used in the HW-101

OA2 Regulator (150 V).

6HS6 RF amplifier.

6HS6 1st receiver mixer.

6AU6 Isolation amplifier.

6AU6 1st IF amplifier.

6AU6 2nd IF amplifier.

6BN8 Product detector and AVC.

6AU6 VFO Amplifier.

6CB6 2nd transmitter mixer.

6CL6 Driver.

6EA8 Speech Amplifier and cathode follower.

6EA8 1st transmitter mixer.

6EA8 2nd receiver mixer and relay amplifier.

6EA8 CW side-tone oscillator and amplifier.

6GW8 Audio amplifier and audio output.

12AT7 Heterodyne oscillator and cathode follower.

12AT7 VOX amplifier and calibrator oscillator.

12AU7 Sideband oscillator.

6146 Final amplifiers (2).

The glowing filaments and grids of tubes are a sight not often seen in today's transistorized world of amateur radio. I hope you enjoy the images...

Video with CW QSO

Brief video ending with WES exchange CW QSO. Listen to the old girl in action...

Update:

Great resource for information on tubes and old radio design...

http://www.tubebooks.org/index.html

That's all for now

Richard Carpenter, AA4OO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from North Carolina, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

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AmateurLogic 114: What’s New with Martin Jue, K5FLU

12 February 2018 | by George W5JDX | Leave a Comment (0)

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 114 is now available for download.

Peter’s infrared experiments part 2. Tommy’s Active Antenna. Emile’s HF Loop part 1. George at the Capital City Hamfest with Martin Jue(MFJ) and Will Jourdain(Icom).

1:23:13

Download
YouTube

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

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The Heathkit HW-101 lives again

10 February 2018 | by Richard AA4OO | Leave a Comment (0)

Ah, the sweet smell of hot tubes and resistors

Heathkit HW-101 after it's first QSO under new ownership

I completed my rebuild of my Heathkit HP-23B power supply this morning. There was a bit of frustration on my part as I followed the instructions because they only have photos of a HP-23 which has adjustable bias and no LV switch.

It left me scratching my head a couple times, and I had to locate a schematic of a HP-23B to complete the work.

Heathkit HP-23B Schematic

I really need to learn more about electronics

In the midst of the rebuild I thought I had a problem with the transformer. Both low voltage winding taps (275v and 350v) showed very low resistance (about 5 Ohms) to chassis ground, which led me to believe there was a short in the transformer.

I called my mentor in all things Ham radio, Paul AA4XX, and described the issue. He walked me through the schematic and had me unsolder a couple points to confirm his guess that all was well. That double tap, low voltage winding presents very low resistance to ground but it is not a short in the world of AC. I continue struggling to wrap my head around the differences in AC and DC, but I'm slowly learning and fortunately haven't caught anything on fire yet.

Out with the old, in with the new

Old components

Testing High Voltage

My Multi-meter can only measure up to 600v, so in order to measure the 800v output I used two 3 watt 100 kOhm resistors in series as a voltage divider. When in use, the MM will read half the voltage.

Voltage divider for measuring the high-voltage output

With the voltage divider the HV power measured 401v which works out to 802v undivided

Completed upgrade

The kit places all the components in the base and the holes that the old big filter capacitors used to be in are now just ventilation. I need to put a wire shield over those holes because high voltages are present just below, as well as some really hot resistors. With the top cover back on it, there shouldn't be a problem but the wire mesh shield is still recommended, especially if it's to be used inside a Heathkit speaker, where the top cover is not used.

With the PCB board, all the components are out of sight in the base except the big resistors

Replaced the HW-101 antenna connector with a BNC

Original antenna connector was a RCA with questionable integrity.

Original RCA antenna jack (viewed from inside chassis)

Replaced with BNC jack which fits without enlarging the original hole.

New antenna jack

The old radio now has power

I replaced the old paper 350v 20uF electrolytic capacitors in the HW-101 and then connected the power cable and switched it on via the switch in the HW-101. I didn't hear any audio at first and thought something was wrong. Silly me, those tubes need a bit to warm up. After a minute I was hearing audio and used the built-in crystal calibrator to check the VFO dial. It was pretty close to spot on.

I ran through some initial checks according to the Heathkit manual. Receive worked well. I listened to some SSB and then dropped down to the 40m CW portion of the band and listened to CW. I waited about 30 minutes for the tubes to warm up. I didn't hear any drift on CW stations I was monitoring.

I found an open frequency, checked the plate current and then tuned up, outputting only about 10 watts because I don't know what state of alignment the finals are in yet. This is the first time I've tuned a tube rig and that was interesting. You have to peak the preselector in receive mode first, then when in tune mode, quickly work back through the preselector, final tune and load levers to peak the RF output. It reads more complicated than it actually is. My OCFD antenna has about a 1.7:1 SWR on 40m so it didn't need much tweaking from the initial settings.

I tuned around and answered N4PGJ, Ron in NY, and had a brief WES exchange. The relay control time set by VOX delay needs to be bumped up a bit as it was dropping between every word break, but other than that it worked like a charm.

I'll make a video soon, but initial impressions are positive. The audio quality was astoundingly good, and the CW filter really did a much better job than I expected. It has a very pleasant sine-wave sidetone rather than the raspy square wave sidetone of my Ten-Tec Century/21. I really think I'm going to enjoy using this old rig.

UPDATE

I got the rig buttoned up and on the desk. Here's a video...

Oldie but goodie

That's all for now

So lower your power and warm up those tubes.

72/73

Richard AA4OO

Richard Carpenter, AA4OO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from North Carolina, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

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A SWR power bridge for uBITX

10 February 2018 | by Steve G1KQH | Leave a Comment (0)

A damp cold Saturday here at Rugeley, the postman has not long been and dropped off my January issue of QRP Quarterly- Journal of the QRP ARCI.

Something good has just caught my eye, especially if your into the uBITX right now.

This month there is an excellent article for a VSWR bridge for the Arduino, which confusingly KW5GP (Glen Popiel) appears to take all the credits? But it appears the article was written or most of it by KV4QB (DuWayne Schmidlkofer)? A better explaination of the confusion, might be to just nip down to DuWayne's Place to understand what has actually gone on.

Why is this article good for the uBITX builder or users? Well at the moment there is no SWR/PWR bridge hardware built into the uBITX, although VU2ESE's Arduino code does appear to implement something for a basic S meter.

The article has a full bridge directional coupler circuit, along with amplified outputs, which are then fed into the Arduino. Along with this, there is the code, that could be easily adapted to work with the uBITX Arduino. Anyway Duwayne, has been good enough to drop off the details along with the code at his Dropbox site here

Steve, G1KQH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from England. Contact him at [email protected].

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Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 193

10 February 2018 | by Cale K4HCK | Leave a Comment (0)

Bouvet DXpedition aborted
Due to high winds and rough seas the captain of the vessel declared it unsafe to continue with our project and aborted the DXpedition.
Bouvetdx.org

D-Star satellite in orbit
D-Star One is a 3U CubeSat with modules configured to work as D-Star repeaters, so they retranslate the received D-Star frames on the downlink frequency.
D-STAR ONE

FT8 DXpedition mode is in the works for WSJT-X
The software can transmit up to five signals simultaneously, upping the potential contact rate to 600/hour.
ARRL

How-to: APRS igate for less than $100
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that getting started is not only relatively straight forward, but also easy on the wallet.
N1AAE

Photos of the colossal Duga-3 Radar System
They’re tearing it down later this year, because all the metal is quite valuable to the ailing economy.
PetaPixel

HamAlert
HamAlert is a system that allows you to get notifications when a desired station appears on the DX cluster, the Reverse Beacon Network, SOTAwatch, or PSK Reporter.
HamAlert

What are those hieroglyphics on your laptop charger?
These symbols are as complicated as the label on the tag of your shirt that have never taught you anything about doing laundry.
Hack A Day

Video

Hawaii’s communication breakdown and how going Ham could save us
Ham Radio operators are standing at the ready and may save us all.
NBC Left Field

Ham Radio 2.0: TYT MD-9600 DMR Mobile, Version 3
Version 3 of the MD-9600 Dual Band DMR Mobile radio from TYT has fixed most of the issues that were present in the first 2 versions.
Ham Radio 2.0

Portable SDR TX: LimeSDR-mini, mobile phone, and QRadioLink
Broadcast FM, digital amateur radio voice, narrow FM, and SSB can be received and transmitted using the LimeSDR-mini.
YouTube

Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

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HP-23 upgrade board kit from Old Heathkit Parts

9 February 2018 | by Richard AA4OO | Leave a Comment (6)

Breath new life into a Heathkit HP-23 power supply

My recent interest in restoring a 1970s Heathkit HW-101 tube radio, is leading me down quite a winding path.

Before I can even test the HW-101 I must be able to supply it with power. Vacuum tube radios need multiple voltages for the different tubes in use. In the case of the 20 vacuum tubes used in the HW-101, it needs the following voltages to operate, 800v, 350v, -130v and 12.6v.

If you've followed previous posts you'd read that I thought I'd be clever (as if), and restore a Heathkit power supply that runs off of 12v so that I could use it mobile or from my 12v linear supply in the shack. Well, I restored a HP-13 and if you read that post and watched/listened to the video you and I now both understand why operators only used those power supplies out of earshot, like in the trunk of their automobile, or in the next county. It makes way too much audio racket to be at my operating position.

So, pouring a bit more money into this effort, I bought a AC/mains powered supply; the Heathkit HP-23B... but alas it has old components and also needs to be restored.

Heathkit HP-23B

No direct replacement capacitors

Those large capacitors in the first photo have no modern equivalent in terms of the pin-outs and the HP-23B chassis used some phenolic wafers that are rather fragile after this many years, to hold those capacitors. There are some videos showing how to adapt modern capacitors to fit and that would help maintain it's classic look, but it seemed a bit fiddly to do. Also, you can see that in the base of the power supply there are numerous other axial caps and resistors that need replacing and it's a frightening mess of wiring in there given the voltages present.

Old Heathkit Parts to the rescue

This is such a common issue with these power supplies, that K8GNZ designed a PCB compatible with modern electronic components that would replace that tangle of wiring. It can be ordered from Old Heathkit Parts for a reasonable sum and comes with a CD listing the components that need to be ordered as well as instructions for building the PCB and wiring it up with the HP-23B.

This board gives you one convenient place to populate all the components and hookup the wiring in the HP-23 chassis.

HP-23D PCB

The 3w 100k resistors go on the bottom mounted 1/4" off the board so they don't burn the board (they get hot)

Partially populated board

All done, ready to wire up to the HP-23 transformer and choke

Note how much smaller the 4 new 450v caps are than the ones they replaced in the photo at the top of the post.

The next step is to tear down the old HP-23B and prepare for this board to replace its innards. Maybe this weekend.

Gotta get the power from the supply to the radio

The power supply has 8 connections to the radio and Amphenol 11-pin plugs are used for the connections. I purchased a wiring kit on eBay that I'm not really pleased with so I won't provide a link to the seller. It works but there were some compromises. If I need another cable I think I'll just find a used one.

Power cable

I also added an amp-key line out from pins 5 (ground) and 11 (relay) for future projects. I terminated it into a female RCA plug. I have previously used the amp-key line from my Ten-Tec Eagle to trigger the protective relay on my SDR, so I may use it for that, or something else. I figured as long as I was soldering 16 connections in those plugs I could solder a couple more.

Amp-key line out

I've also purchased an additional NOS female Amphenol 11-pin chassis plug that I plan to wire up from the Grove connector on the HP-13 so that I can just use the HP-23 cable with the HP-13 if I wish to in the future.

So just a few more hours of work and I should be able to light up the old HW-101 for the first time in decades.

The smell of hot tubes awaits... or magic smoke... I hope it's the former

That's all for now

72/73

Richard, AA4OO

Richard Carpenter, AA4OO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from North Carolina, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

» Leave a Comment (6)

The inside of a Heathkit HW-101 is too interesting not to photograph

List of tubes and their function used in the HW-101

Video with CW QSO

Update:

Ah, the sweet smell of hot tubes and resistors

I really need to learn more about electronics

Out with the old, in with the new

Testing High Voltage

Completed upgrade

Replaced the HW-101 antenna connector with a BNC

The old radio now has power

UPDATE

Video

Breath new life into a Heathkit HP-23 power supply

No direct replacement capacitors

Old Heathkit Parts to the rescue

Gotta get the power from the supply to the radio

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