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Sunspot number today has fallen to 50, the lowest for quite a while and 10m propagation is forecast to be “fair” again.

Yesterday, 10m did open for me to the USA and plenty of stateside stations copied my 500mW beacon in the end after a late start. I suspect today it may be harder going as we seem, on average, to now be on the downward slope towards the next minimum, although this is years away. If predictions of the next maximum are to be believed, a SN of 50 would be considered a decent figure for the next sunspot peak! Of course, the predictions could be wrong, although the predictions have improved a lot and most got cycle 24 pretty accurately.

I have not yet turned on the 10m beacon this morning as we have visitors. It will probably be turned on just before lunch. I am still on MF but there are few active stations in range.

See http://www.solen.info/solar/ .

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

Hello, listeners! In this fortnight's episode, we discuss emergency communications, Hamvention, paperless FCC licenses, the Rowetel SM1000, ShinySDR, streaming Netflix on Linux and a whole bunch of other stuff. Thank you for listening, and don't forget to donate to our Indiegogo Hamvention campaign if you can.

73 de The LHS Guys

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at russ@bluecows.com.

The long-awaited next edition of the UK-based HD TV show dedicated to amateur radio is now available at www.txfactor.co.uk

In this episode the team investigates the issues of recruiting young people to the hobby and visits a veteran amateur who’s an inspiration to us all! We discover what the IOTA programme has to celebrate and test an innovative 2 metre antenna which can be won in our next draw.

We hope you enjoy the show!

TX Factor Team

Nick Bennett 2EØFGQ co-hosts TX Factor with Bob McCreadie GØFGX and Mike Marsh G1IAR. Contact the team at info@txfactor.co.uk

Over the last decade, I’ve listened to many ham radio podcasts and found them to be a great way to pass the time while driving or working in my home office.

Some of the best podcasts have come and gone, and some wax and wane on a regular basis as the host’s time permits (Jerry, we miss PARP!).

I put a list together of the eight podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis. Hopefully you’ll see one or two that you haven’t added to your list. Do you also enjoy listening to any of these great podcasts?

(And if I’ve missed a good one, please let me know in the comments!)

#1: ARRL Audio News

#2: Amateur Radio Newsline

#3: SolderSmoke Podcast

#4: ICQ Amateur Radio Podcast

#5: Hap Holly’s RAIN Report

#6: Linux in the Ham Shack

#7: Fo Time

#8: QSO Today

#9: 100 Watts and a Wire

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at editor@amateurradio.com.

This past week,  Les Rayburn (N1LF), compared his yearn for the start of spring baseball to the late spring return of summer VHF openings, with this delightfully nostalgic post to the VHF reflector.

It occurred to me this morning that being a VHF operator is a lot like being a baseball fan. It was warm and sunny here yesterday, and this morning the air has that first touch of Spring in it.

Sure, there arestill cold days ahead--but you just have that feeling that we've turned the corner on Winter. The days are getting a bit longer, and the sun doesn't set quite so early anymore.

And like baseball fans, we start to look forward to those first
rumblings out of the Spring league.

For me, that means the confident voice of August, K5HCT. Nothing heralds
the arrival of the season like those first faint signals and the
familiar refrain..."Here Comes Texas!". This is nearly always the first
call I hear in the season, and the last remaining on the band at it's end.

In my boyhood days, I loved listening to baseball on the radio at night.
Those far away places, and the crack of the bat---mixed with the static
and pops of Summer storms. It was like a magic carpet that could
transport me thousands of miles away...The rest of the year, I still
enjoyed tuning the dial during the overnight hours--maybe listening to
the Herb Jepko Nightcap show from Salt Lake, or Larry King---but radio
wasn't the same without baseball. And those months between the World
Series and Opening Day were the longest of the year.

All these years later, things haven't changed much. I still love
listening to baseball on the radio---but now while waiting for opening
day, I find myself turning another dial...listening hard in the static
to see if I can hear that faint signal on the calling frequency. A deep,
rich, confident voice calling "This K5HCT, Here Comes Texas!".

Somebody press play on that MP3 player or I-Phone---cue up Don Henley's
"Boys of Summer"...I'll hum along and wait for Spring.

--
--
73,

Les Rayburn, N1LF
121 Mayfair Park
Maylene, AL 35114
EM63nf
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at ve7sl@shaw.ca.

Next event to be broadcast live:
AmateurLogic.TV episode 75. Watch us produce it live Friday night, February 13th at 7:00 CST, 0100 UTC. As always, it’s the longer, raw, unedited version as it happens.
www.live.amateurlogic.tv

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 george@amateurlogic.tv.

Having being inspired by one of Peter VK3YE recent video's, it was time to purchase a couple of kits and dust the soldering iron off the shelf and get down to building one:

This could prove to be a very useful piece of component test kit, for the constructor and repair bench, including the novice. It does, R, L, C  including ESR, Diodes and Transistors, giving the pin configuration detail of the Semiconductor device undertest as well as the useful gain figures. 







It is basically a copy of the Karl-Heinz Kubbeler design, centred around a programmable ATMEGA328 microcontroller which is very well documented. The kit took about 2 weeks to arrive from China, which contains a well made PCB, display module and all the components, including the blown main chip all for around £8.00 ($12 US). It comes with no instructions on how to put it together, but a Chinese manual is downloadable from the purchase site, which I will make a link available at the bottom of this Blog. Infact, really you don't need the manual for construction, as the component values are printed on the PCB, it just helps a little to get one or two things installed the right way around like the switch, and the circuit diagram can be useful for component reference and maybe fault finding later? Of course the Chinese manual is written in Chinglish, we are refered to welding not soldering! I don't think my old arc welder would prove very suitable for this project somehow? Hi!





I emptied all the components out of their anti-static packet into an empty biscuit tin, so I didn't lose any of them. I was away, it took around 2 hours of soldering, and sorting out the correct values, a DMM can help with the resistors values, as I found an orange band can look like a red, so its best to measure them to avoid confusion and getting one soldered in the wrong position. Transistors are marked to board values, and the marking of the outline makes sure you cannot put the devices in the wrong way around.

At this stage it is time to check the board over for shorts, man made solder links etc, and snip off component ends. All looked ok, time to connect the 9V battery, before inserting the main ATMEGA IC, at this point a DMM is required to check for regulated 5V at the IC socket pins 7 & 22, all confirmed correct and the regulator was doing its job!  
 
All in all it was quite a relaxing project to put together, I didn't find anything too difficult, although a bit of care is needed aligning up the pins of the main chip before pushing firmly home into its socket.




 



There is not much work to do with the display board as most of this is already constructed, just a strip of header pins that carefully require soldering in across the top of its PCB. This then mates up with the socket strip on the main board when it is pushed home and bolted together. 




All looked good time to switch on! If it fires up correctly one push of the On button should turn on the display. In my case it did, and didn't? When I released the Push To Make switch, it went out ? Some folk have had problems putting the switch in the wrong way around, I knew I hadn't done this and a quick check confirmed the switch had been inserted correctly, time to investigate further? The clue was the LED under the display board wasn't on, a quick check with the DMM around the circuit in this area confirmed my thoughts, I had put the LED in the wrong way, huh! Oh dear! I had to pull it all apart, split the two boards desolder and turn the LED around, and then put it all back together.








Great it then fired up correctly, and held in its On state after pushing and releasing the button, a quick adjustment of the contrast pot to get the display correct and all was looking well, time to calibrate..

To be continued in part 2.

References:

This is where I purchased the kit from, although they are available from ebay too:

http://www.banggood.com/DIY-Meter-Tester-Kit-For-Capacitance-ESR-Inductance-Resistor-NPN-PNP-p-929603.html  

Construction manual:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zpjwo3vfv9yfr5b/SKU136841%20M8install.pdf


Design manual helps with Calibration and other stuff:

www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/143813/TTester_096k.pdf

Newer version of manual:

www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/164956/ttester_eng104k.pdf
Steve, G1KQH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from England. Contact him at g1kqh@arrl.net.