Posts Tagged ‘Uncategorized’
A little pre Christmas present
December 7th, 2016 | 
Author: For less than a fiver. CPC shows how far I haven’t come with my minima build. Still the PCB stand looks good. That should make it easier at least.
Available here
Smartlock
The Smartlock is an accessory for my SGC SG-239 HF Smartuner, and other ATUs they make. It can be bought ready made or built.
“I wanted to build a SmartLock to use with my SG-239. After studying the SmartLock schematic, I couldn’t figure out why SGC put in the transistor and zener diode. The ST-TNE input on the SG-239 is just a 1.5K resistor to an open collector transistor to ground. So I eliminated Q1, R3, D1 and C3 on the SGC SmartLock schematic. My final circuit is shown below. I used a DB9S connector to interface with the SGC tuner (I attached a DB9P to the tuner interface wires), and a PowerPole interface for 12VDC. This way I could use a standard DB9 extension cable as necessary for interfacing between the tuner and SmartLock. I used ultra-bright LEDs (3000mcd or so) to provide plenty of visibility.”
SGC Smartlock control
Opportunity
A Maker Faire is a gathering of makers, essentially anyone who builds stuff such robots, electronics, clothes, tools, and equipment. It’s a very heterogeneous culture of people young and old, and includes do-it-youselfers (DIYs), teachers, engineers, scientists, hackers, and geeks. Think of Maker Faires as hamfests for makers. I attended Maker Faire New York City this year, my first Maker Faire. Think of Maker Faire NYC as the Dayton Hamvention of hamfests.
Any drive into The City, as we call it around here, is adventurous. This Faire was located at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) in Queens. You couldn’t park anywhere near the event, but there were numerous public mass transit options and two offsite parking areas with shuttle buses. We chose to park at Queens College and take the shuttle in.
The Faire consisted of mostly outdoor and some indoor exhibits, including ones that are part of NYSCI. I can’t do this event justice with the pictures I took, but there’s a pretty good slideshow on the Maker Faire site.
The most popular area, at least judging by the line of people awaiting to enter, was the Radio Shack booth, believe it or not. They had a build your own drone activity that people seemed to be falling all over themselves to get in. If only Radio Shack could get lines like this in their stores.
The coolest contraption in my humble opinion was a toasted cheese sandwich machine.
On the Faire map I was pleased to see an area labeled Amateur Radio. I donned my baseball cap embroidered with my callsign, normally reserved for the annual Dayton pilgrimage. The way the map was labeled, I expected to find a whole row of amateur radio stuff. There was one booth with two pop up canopies, manned by perhaps four hams. One side of the booth had a portable rig mounted in a plywood enclosure with some accessory boxes, perhaps a digital station. The other side of the booth had two tables with components and some kids soldering.
I want to be careful not to diminish or criticize the efforts of these amateurs and the organization they represented. After all, these guys made the effort and had an amateur radio booth (which is more than I can say for other organizations). But admittedly I was disappointed. I was really dismayed there weren’t more booths, especially considering the number of amateur radio operators there are in NYC, probably more in a five mile radius than I have in my entire rural county in PA. This is undoubtedly the largest gathering of people on the east coast who are interested in how things work, how to build things, and they’re smart people. Wireless for many makers is just a shield that you buy and plop on an Arduino or a USB dongle you plug into a Raspberry Pi. Amateur radio has so much to offer.
ARRL needs to have an exhibit at this event, in a big way, and not in the fashion they do at Dayton. There needs to be interactive hands-on displays by enthusiastic high energy amateurs. Not hardcore contesters or DXers, but amateurs who build stuff and can talk about practical applications that these makers can relate to and integrate into their existing projects and pursuits. Even CW displays would be interesting for this audience, it just needs to not be presented as a code proficiency course or a rite of passage, but something that is fun. Retro tech intrigues these people. Vacuum tubes would be considered cool by many makers, especially if you had some homebrew rigs built on plywood with filaments lit up and some RF meters dancing around or big old speakers crackling with the sounds of code or sideband coming from a direct conversion receiver. Fox hunts. This crowd would eat that up. Make a crystal radio with six components. There are plenty of high power AM stations in NYC that you can receive on a simple crystal radio. Kids holding Arrow antennas and listening to a satellite passing over. There’s just so much that could be done to showcase amateur radio at this and other Maker Faires, and draw people into the hobby. We’re missing a huge opportunity. Huge.
This article was originally posted on Radio Artisan.
Success!
Great moment this afternoon when the Automatic Loop Controller fired up as it should. Happy days.
When I first fired it up, after loading up the Arduino program, all I could see was a dull green glow on the screen. It wasn’t until I remembered a comment from another builder about adjusting the potentiometer on the PCB that controls the LCD contrast.
It was a great relief that my slow and deliberate build – double checking all component values and joints – paid off. Next step is to build the SWR bridge and connect to the stepper motor on the loop.
NPOTA – First Pile Up
NPOTA as most reading this will know by now, stands for National Park On The Air. It is an ARRl year long event helping the National Park Service celebrate their 100th anniversary. It operates a lot like SOTA in that there are activators and chasers. I was able to participate last Saturday as an activator when I visited some other hams that had setup at the Pea Ridge National Military Park for an activation.
The battle at Pea Ridge was a pivotal Civil War battle that took place March 7-8 1862. The battlefield was spread across 4,300 acres where 26,000 soldiers fought. Today it is still one of the most intact remaining battlefields from the Civil War left in the United States. If you are a history buff and would like more information about the park, you can visit the nps.gov website. Here is the wikipedia page about the battle.
The radio setup consisted of a Yaseu FT-450, a Carolina Windom antenna, and laptop all being powered by a small generator. The team made over 400 contacts for the day. We worked stations fairly constantly most of the day.
I watched the operators for a little while, then jumped in to log for the operator working the radio. After a while they asked me to take the microphone. This was my fist time on the receiving end of a pile up. Someone had spotted us and there were a lot of people all at once trying to contact us. I got flustered and made a lot of mistakes. After a bit, I turned the microphone over to Don, K5DB who was a lot more experienced at working this style of operation. He has been doing NPOTA all year. I went back to login but watching and listening to Don work the pileup, trying to learn. After a while I got back on the mic and tried again. I simply tried to emulate what Don did. I actually was better at it the second time. When I called QRZ or CQ, I would write down 2-4 partial callsigns or even a complete call, as I was able. Then I worked down that small list, calling for the partials. Don got it across to me that I needed to control the pileup. Ask for specific partials, ignore the ones that don’t match that are just trying to barge their way in. I was in charge! I say that not as a control freak but as someone who learned a lot this weekend, working his first pileup.
A few tips for anyone who tackles a NPOTA pileup for the first time. The more experienced ops already know this!
- It’s not a real contest, it’s NPOTA. So relax!
- If you have someone logging for you, you should have paper & pencil for notes, partial callsigns as you operate. I can’t speak to doing this by yourself as I have not done that yet.
- Call the stations you hear, calling back partials as needed.
- Don’t let bully stations barge in when you are calling a specific station. Ignore them.
- Maintain control of the pileup! You are the boss for the moment.
- You can only work one station at a time. You will get to most of them in time.
- You will make mistakes the first time, just deal with it a move on.
- Relax! it’s not a real contest!
I definitely need to get out and operate more in this the of situation.
73 and good luck!
FreeCAD 3D design software
Our club has been (slowly) constructing a SatNOGS 3D printed satellite ground station. It uses a bunch of parts that have been designed on a platform called 3D CAD. This is a free (as the name suggests) 3D CAD solids modelling tool. For those not familiar with mechanical design here’s a very quick and simple run through.
The good old days gave you 2 dimensional CAD packages. One of the most famous was AutoCAD. There have been many releases and it still has a place today (you can even get a free version called Draft Sight).
Perfect for producing 2D drawings in the traditional was. Also ideal for those .dxf files for laser cutting front panels for example. These are simple tools to get your head round but ultimately very powerful. This technology has been used to deliver some pretty complex engineering so don’t underestimate its usefulness
3D CAD design can look like a complex business but as tools develop the proliferation of simple to use applications exist and as expected they use their own language. 2D drawings are no longer the standard and so 3D parametric CAD systems are available from a number of big players like AutoCAD and SolidWorks. They range from very expensive professional packages that have features that only the very keen would need (like finite element analysis, animation and computational fluid dynamics) through to offshoots that are particularly aimed at home users. In amongst these packages are offerings such as FreeCAD and SketchUp which are completely free and very well supported. There is only one preferred standard and that is for the .stl file type although there are key differences between types.
Solids modelling and Surface modelling. As the names suggest one type produces solid shapes which are determined through sketching a part in 2D then turning that into a 3D part by stretching or revolving it around and axis for instance. These are generally referred to parametric modelling tools and they produce solid shapes. Examples of these types are FreeCAD, AutoCAD inventor and Solidworks. SketchUp on the other hand produces hollow surfaces. An easy analogy is between a dice and a cardboard box. Both are cubes, one is hollow and the other is solid. 3D printers for example need to think in terms of solids. This doesn’t mean you can’t use a surface modelling tool to produce a part, it means there are some additional bits of computer based thinking that needs to be done.
FreeCAD falls squarely into the 3D parametric solids modelling camp (for the purists, yes it does do sheet and mesh work but stay with me on this). It is also nice and simple once you get your head round the basic premise. Sketch something in 2D then pad it to make a solid and perhaps put in a pocket for a bolt hole for example. I have been working my way through a few tutorials on YouTube and can recommend theses…..
Once you get into the workbench idea and the language used it is relatively straightforward producing designs. I think the issues are that the assembly workbench isn’t quite there yet and it isn’t as polished as commercial alternatives, but hey it doesn’t cost thousands.
There are also a number of developing online packages like 123D CAD and Onshape but I haven’t had a look at those in any detail. The premise is still the same. draw a 2D sketch, constrain it with dimensions, symmetry, equality etc and extrude, revolve, pocket to your hearts content. It is a really great step to see such powerful tools available for free.
It wouldn’t be fair to mention the extremely accessible surface modelling package that is SketchUp. A Once Google product that instead of producing solids models faces and uses clever tricks to make you thinks they are solids. This is a great tool and is good enough for 3D printing parts. Just beware of its limitations and well aware of the huge amount of models available in its warehouse.
Well worth considering for anything from shack layout to 3D parts design.
Hopefully I will get re-antiquated with this new tools as its been a while sine I behaved like a clanky (that is a mechanical engineer to you lot). There are some truly staggeringly clever products available that you only need invest a bit of time in learning.
Dayton 2016
Another year, another Dayton in the history books. This was my third Hamvention trek, but this year was a bit different for me as I attended with my girlfriend. She somehow coaxed me into it, despite my concerns she would be bored out of her mind. However, we both had a great time.
Happy Hamventioners
I didn’t take as many pictures this year. At times I felt I could have recycled photos from the last two years and no one would notice. But there were some new sights to see….
Mannequintenna?
Yaesu was handing out truckloads of free “Yaesu 60th Anniversary” hats and other logo-adorned swag as usual. I was tempted to alter a hat to say “Yaesu FT-817 60th Anniversary” as the long-in-the-tooth rig continues to be offered with no modern update in sight. Ride that pony, Yaesu. As Jeff KE9V reported, no, the FT-891 is not an 817 replacement. It’s not an FT-897 replacement, either, so don’t ask. The FT-817 continues to be the Keith Richards of amateur radio rigs.
Required Equipment in Hara Arena Bathrooms
The Kenwood booth actually had visitors in contrast with last year when there were more tumbleweeds than attendees. Their newly announced super duper digital VHF/UHF rig undoubtedly attracted inquiries, though shame on their product line management people for not having it ready to sell at Dayton. In Kenwood’s defense, Yaesu’s new FT-891 wasn’t available for purchase, either.
When All Else Fails, Make a Daiquiri
The crazy rig-selling train known as Elecraft continues barreling down the track. As everyone is undoubtedly well aware now, they released the KX2 at the Hamvention. No, this isn’t an X-rated version of the K2, or two K1s merged together, it’s a smaller KX3 without 6 meters or 2 meter add-on capability. This rig could have been a Yaesu FT-817 killer if it had VHF and UHF capability and reasonable pricing. 2 meter capability especially would have made sense to include considering this rig has the size and essentially the form factor of an HT. No doubt Elecraft will sell a ton of these rigs, but then again if they released a new version of the K1 packaged in a 55 gallon drum, they would sell them by the dump truck load.
I question how much longer Elecraft can keep up this sales momentum which I often feel is fueled by unreasonable customer loyalty. (Full disclosure: I own three Elecraft rigs.) Last year’s big announcement was the K3S, an improved K3, which teed off new K3 owners. This year’s release was a repackaged KX3. Elecraft seems to be innovating less and recycling products more.
Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto
I’m pleased to report there was a robot competition area and a local Makerspace representative booth. It’s good to see more Maker-oriented vendors and displays, which is really going to be the key to growing amateur radio after our older amateurs go silent key in the next decade. Hamvention folks, please, keep increasing this type of content.
Mendelson’s Flea Market Tent Family Planning Center
The flea market appeared to be the same size, with many long standing attendees selling the same junk, I mean, classic wares. I think there were less amplifiers for sale this year. That’s just a gut feeling, but I seem to recall many more amps last year. The same goes for rigs.
No Hamvention report would be complete without mentioning the condition of Hara Arena. Yes, good old Hara Arena. This is the final year for Hara. Seriously. I’m going on record and predicting it now. Really. This is it. Seriously. Last year’s announced multi-million dollar renovation plan fell through. I can’t imagine the facility can continue operating in its ever-worsening condition as it’s become a human safety nightmare that would cause any sane insurance company underwriter to run away screaming like their hair was on fire. Expect something to happen prior to the next Hamvention, either the occupancy permit being revoked, or the building turning into a pile a rubble on its own or by wrecking ball. Last year. Trust me. That being said, I left late afternoon Saturday sadly waving bye to Hara Arena thinking this may be the last year, like I was losing a dying friend. But the Hamvention is not Hara Arena, and Hara is not the Hamvention.
