EMRFD Message Archive 9356

Message Date From Subject
9356 2013-11-12 14:47:24 Jim New QEX arrived in the mail today
I get the feeling that maybe they should change the name to

"Journal of Irreproducible Results."

73
Jim N6OTQ
9357 2013-11-12 18:56:24 rcbuckiii Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

The crystal measurement article was an interesting read. But a lot of the hardware details are missing and no link to source code. I also don't believe that you can test 150 crystals per hour. Every article I have ever read describing how to measure crystal characteristics says to plug the crystal into the socket and wait 5 minutes before obtaining any data. Possibly he uses thick wool gloves to pick up the crystals.

Ray, AB7HE



9358 2013-11-12 19:17:19 Ashhar Farhan Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
socket? you can't really measure a crystal in a socket unless it is mounted closely on the pcb. I use an 8 pin IC  base for plugging in the crystals.  at least, in my experience that has been the case. has anybody figured out a better way to mark individual crystals when sorting them out? the low profile HC-49/U are tough to write on.

- farhan


9359 2013-11-12 20:20:22 Russ Ramirez Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

Since the subject came up, has QEX always seemed to be a wannabe professional journal? The author demographic mainly seems to represent a tiny percentage of those interested in radio experimentation. I'm pretty sure I'm dropping it until or unless it starts to reflect less academic pursuits.

Russ
K0WFS

9361 2013-11-13 02:08:06 Stephen Farthing Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
When I retired from work one of the money saving things I had to do was to stop my subscription for the ARRL. As I live in the UK it made sense but I sure do miss QEX. I have about ten years worth and refer to them several times a week. So, whenever someone says "QEX arrived today and it's a real good issue" I am jealous...

73s from a cold but sunny England,

Steve G0XAR
9362 2013-11-13 06:57:15 Jim Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Hi Ray

That article frustrated me the most, to the point that I had to check the cover to see whether it was the April issue.

73
Jim N6OTQ


--------------------------------------------
9363 2013-11-13 09:55:30 Dave Daniel Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
I always thought that was the point of QEX. A bit more in depth technically and a mix of more advanced hands-on and more theoretical articles than are in QST. I have always enjoyed reading QEX.

73,
Dave
KC0WJN

9364 2013-11-13 09:57:27 EricJ Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
QEX has a worldwide distribution so I'm pretty sure it will find both readers in the world who have an interest in testing 150 xtals an hour.

I've been a ham for 57 years and doubt I have even SEEN 150 xtals in all that time. Even when you could buy a case of surplus FT-243 xtals with consecutive channel markings.

I think I can safely drop that subscription now. What would be great is to have a magazine with all the types of articles that used to be in QST. Or a magazine based on the level of experiments in EMRFD. Things that actual homebrew hams would fire up the soldering iron for.

Eric
KE6US

9365 2013-11-13 10:00:44 Dana Myers Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
9366 2013-11-13 10:20:28 Chris Howard w0ep Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Well.... there's always the option of writing an
article and sending it in.

They even pay!

Chris
w0ep

9367 2013-11-13 10:54:12 cwfingertalker Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

Dana and the Group,


Yes Ham Radio magazine was my choice for homebrewing articles.  You would think in today's internet world some enterprising ham/editor type would bring it back as an online magazine. 


Bill N7EU





9368 2013-11-13 10:58:33 Dino Papas Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Have any of the folks who are dissatisfied with QEX's content actually written to Larry Wolfgang, WR1B and offered up their observations? It might be interesting to see how he replied. Several potential replies come to mind:

"Thanks for your interest, we're not changing anything as we think our content is quite appropriate."

"You know, you're right we need to review how we go about selecting the level of technological complexity vs. target audience vs. skill level of the majority of readers, etc. etc."

"Got it, you're right and we're going to institute immediate changes to better suit our readers' needs."

Guess we won't know until someone shares that kind of feedback with the group.

Dino KL0S
9369 2013-11-13 11:17:39 Stewart Bryant Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
9370 2013-11-13 11:50:14 Gene Dorcas Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

I think if they had a mixture of medium level and high level projects instead of just high level it would be a huge success.

 

Gene, W5DOR

gene@w5dor.com

www.w5dor.com

 

 

9371 2013-11-13 12:43:17 Jim Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
I think that if I cannot build it -- or fully simulate it on my computer -- maybe it doesn't belong in the magazine.

Or, knowing how hard it is to rustle up articles (I used to be a magazine editor), at least not publish an entire book filled with non-reproducible results.

Not all the QEX readers "get" every article in every issue.  It'd be really nice to have a "baby steps" article in every issue that provides a fairly high-tech, esoteric ham radio goodie.  But -- see my last paragraph.

There's a reason that ARRL hated Wayne Green so much, and why many of us out here miss both "73" and "ham radio" so much.  Both books published stuff that we could and DID build, month after month after month.  "QST" and "QEX", not so much.  In fact, almost never, much of the time.

But since my experience is limited to merely 25+ years as a ham (QCWA member) and electronics hobbyist/tinkerer since the early 1960s, my views aren't given much much weight in Newington, no matter how willingly they take my money.

73
Jim N6OTQ
ARRL Life Member



9372 2013-11-13 13:03:02 Lasse Moell Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Amen to that!
I am sure any editor would LOVE to hear from the readers... and if the voices tells him that they should change, I'm sure they at least will consider a change!

And I bet they do have problems to find enough articles to fill the mag... hence they end up with stuff that not may be their first choice.

So grab the pen and do write a synopsis on what you have been developing, and show the editor. Others would love to read about it!!!

73 Lasse SM5GLC

On 13 nov 2013 19:58 "Dino Papas" wrote:

 

Have any of the folks who are dissatisfied with QEX's content actually written to Larry Wolfgang, WR1B and offered up their observations? It might be interesting to see how he replied. Several potential replies come to mind:

"Thanks for your interest, we're not changing anything as we think our content is quite appropriate."

"You know, you're right we need to review how we go about selecting the level of technological complexity vs. target audience vs. skill level of the majority of readers, etc. etc."

"Got it, you're right and we're going to institute immediate changes to better suit our readers' needs."

Guess we won't know until someone shares that kind of feedback with the group.

Dino KL0S

9373 2013-11-13 13:06:30 ford@highmarks.co... Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

I dropped my membership a few years ago.  This is more than a hobby.  And the directions you can take it include 360 points of the compass!  Once the 5BDXCC was on the wall, and contesting became toxic, I moved back to my roots, which is building. 

 

I agree with Jim on this…  If I can’t build it, then I need to buy it—one of “it.”  My wife has a classic question for me each time I haul home more projects from a swapfest.  “Who are you going to talk to with THIS new stuff that you cannot talk to with THAT old stuff?”  I can’t argue with the logic.  The day I bought a $1200 spool of coax and she saw the charge on my credit card, “What did you do with it?  Where is it?”  Gulp…  I buried it in the back yard dear…  I’m glad I married a saint as she puts up with my eccentricity.

 

Sigh…

 

If the focus was on using some of the newer parts, polishing my building technique, or provided some nuts-and-bolts explanation of how to make stuff work on MY workbench, then maybe I’d move back into the membership.  My interests are well beyond 468/F half-wave dipoles and 5NN es TNX QRZ? Articles you find in QST.  Everything I touch seems to have a vertical learning curve.  If it was easy it wouldn’t have the fascination.  And the “cool factor” is king…  So helping me learn to do the stuff geniuses figured out decades ago would be valuable to me.

 

Ford-N0FP

 

 

 

 

9374 2013-11-13 13:08:11 Jim Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Dino.

It's fun to complain.  But in this case, I like to fall back on a principle from "The One-Minute Manager," which says "If you don't have a solution to offer, then it's not a problem."

The obvious solution is to offer an article that suits your needs, or at least a cogent and well-crafted proposal for an article you'd like to see, even if you cannot write it yourself.

The manager (in this case, I guess that would be Wolfgang '1B) needs to know where to start to solve the problem.

It's easy for me to say "I want articles that describe stuff that I can build" but my building skills and motivation aren't the same as those of most folks.  Nevertheless, I've bought and assembled a couple of kits from articles in "QEX."

I guess if I were to describe what I wanted, it'd have to be "articles that I can understand, which describe projects I can build or techniques I can apply in the real world." 

But that's not an answer, it's merely a description.

I sure miss Wayne Green.

73
Jim N6OTQ

PS -- Who would subscribe to a dead-tree publication that filled the same "build it tonight" niche that "73" delivered?  I'd need maybe 20,000 potential subscribers before I could do a venture like this ... and I'm thinking that at best I'll live only another 20 years in which I will be able to keep such a book in print.



9375 2013-11-13 13:20:30 Harold Smith Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
IMHO, the current best magazine for homebrewers is QRP Quarterly, published by QRP ARCI.  Not perfect, but not as stratospheric as QEX, or as dumbed down as QST.

de KE6TI, Harold


9376 2013-11-13 13:28:19 rlramirez77 Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Jim, I think you nailed it twice.

I considered sending feedback to Larry Wolfgang, which is certainly not a bad idea, but then how many article submissions do they get per quarter for QEX? Maybe the input Larry gets has driven the direction of QEX more than any deliberate decision. If Ulrich Rohde sends in a submission, are they going to turn it down? This is why I asked the question I did; only having a sample of about 8 issues of QEX to go by. Driving QEX/QST in a directi
9377 2013-11-13 13:38:44 Jim Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Bill

The problem with the internet is that everybody thinks that since information wants to be free, ALL information unconditionally NEEDS to be free.

Me, I have rent to pay and groceries to buy.  And even though my websites only cost a few hundred dollars a year, if their bandwidth had to be increased to manage the volume of traffic I'm confident I can drive, the bill would easily hit  few thousand or even a few tens of thousands.

Data ain't cheap, except when you're just sucking it down.

So I can do "73" but I need to hit a quarter million bucks a year net revenue within just a few years.  That's just me.  But Wayne put a photo of his home QTH on the cover of "73" once, and it was NOT cheap digs.  He made a good living and and we loved him for it.

I know a few people who wouldn't mind being published ham radio authors, but they want to be paid, and the best one is 70something years old.  So ... it all boils down to money, in the short term, and even though it might be a hobby, it's obvious that QRM -- er, I meant to say QST -- simply doesn't pay enough, and apparently places too many restrictions on what authors can do.

FWIW, back in the day, "73" bought nearly everything, and paid approximately four to ten times what "QST" paid.  Given its circulation, "QST's" pay scale is about 1/10 what it should be.  And this is tracked historically for as long as I've been in publishing.  But that's only since about 1980....

There really is a reason why ARRL is so advertising-centric.  The reason is -- it takes a whole lot of money to do what they do.

And for me to do something like that, I need a whole lot of money for me, and a whole lot of money to pay the people who help me do it.

No complex scenario in that.

73
Jim N6OTQ




9378 2013-11-13 17:12:45 w5ida Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

Let me second this motion.  I am an editor of QRP Quarterly and would love to see prospective articles from anyone who would like to tell us what they are doing regarding homebrew.  We love to publish homebrew articles and are especially interested in articles from anyone who wants to show newbies how to homebrew.  Homebrew is the essence of amateur radio and we would love to keep it going.

 

No need to worry about formatting or special rules regarding how to write.  We just need a draft and any pictures in a popular file format (JPG, GIF, etc.).  We take care of the rest.  You can write me at w5ida@arrl.net.

73,

John, W5IDA



9379 2013-11-13 17:19:59 ford@highmarks.co... Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

www.n0fp.com

 

Ford-N0FP

 

 

9380 2013-11-13 18:10:56 Ashhar Farhan Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
For most authors or potential authors, publishing an article is a way
of peer review. As the famous comp prof Donald Knuth said it is the
'grudging acknowledgment of a few peers' that drives them to publish.
Before the Internet arrived, it was impossible to reach out to these
peers. Now it is easy. Thus, a lot of amateur publishing has moved to
Internet.
There is one (and a large one at that) group of us that want straight
HOW-TO articles. However, unless new techniques, frontiers and
different approaches are tried and explained, we will never get
enticed into trying them out. As rick famously said, in real science
the answers are not at the back of the book - or a past issue of QEX.
For this other group, books like EMRFD and this list are a valuable resource.
Sites like qrp pops and wes's (no longer online) steer us in that direction.
Occasionally, QST and QEX do that too.
But, I really cannot disregard the seminal articles that they have carried.
Almost on a daily basis, I miss having complete collection of these
two. I have a discontinuous collection with large gaps through 90s and
60s.
During our eyeball qso Hans(G0UPL) and I discovered our mutual boredom
from repeatedly being subjected to hundreds of indistinguishable
variations of NE602 based receivers in the homebrew journals.
I am frankly bored by looking at articles that I could build anyway. I
need to see ambitious projects that are above my level of competence.
I want to move beyond adding footnotes to standard designs.
A one evening project is absolutely welcome but it should make me
learn something new.. Two signal generators, a combiner a step
attenuator and a receiver is what I need, now show me what I can try
out....
- f

On 11/14/13, ford@highmarks.com <ford@highmarks.com> wrote:
> www.n0fp.com<http://www.n0fp.com>
>
> Ford-N0FP
>
>
>
9381 2013-11-13 18:57:02 Gene Dorcas Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

I didn’t renew my QEX subscription.

 

I bought The Best of Idea Exchange which is a collection from the QRP Quarterly.  It was well worth the $ spent.  I especially was pleased to find it had ideas about various ways to use my HP 8640B.  It even describes a way to use the 8640B as a scalar Network Analyzer. . . Plus lots of other great ideas.

 

And, you’re saying you’d like articles from us homebrewers ???   I bet if you just ask on a few of these homebrewers groups like this one you’d have lots of articles or at least ideas for articles.

 

Thanks for the QRP Quarterly.  A great periodical and source of homebrew ideas.  I like it much better than my QST . . but, don’t get me wrong – QST is needed in the ham world but for us homebrewers it doesn’t offer much.  It seems like years ago it had more DIY articles.

 

Gene, W5DOR

gene@w5dor.com

www.w5dor.com

 

 

9382 2013-11-13 19:33:30 ford@highmarks.co... Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
My bucket list includes building an all-HF transceiver that has USB/LSB using a mixer considerably more robust than a SA602. It's likely a dual conversion superhet. I'd also like it to have AM, SSB, and CW, with a fully functioning AGC. Maybe even multiple bandwidth selectivity filters. Get good at this I might even try my hand at DSP. It would be my design and the culmination of combining a dozen features from two dozen different rigs into one. It will be one-of-a-kind. By the time I build three or four of them, they might actually be worthy of repeating and an article.

I obviously have too many radios laying around and no need for yet another radio. Using my wife's logic "who are you going to talk to that you cannot talk to with these other 5 radios?", there is no purpose for owning yet another radio. So it becomes 95% a study in the art of building and 5% the capability of another radio. For me, it's about the tools and the art form. Possibly most important, I'm having fun learning!

Ford-N0FP


-----Original Message--
9383 2013-11-13 19:42:03 Ashhar Farhan Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Ford,

your source of domestic anguish is the fact that you have five radios around the house that work.
 i would suggest that you immediately change your AOR7030's front end with an experimental 12AT7 passive switching mixer , replace the linears with class-f width modulated amps using fast SCRs and try cavity resonators for BFOs.

- farhan


9384 2013-11-13 20:10:27 ford@highmarks.co... Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

…cavity resonator BFO.  That made me smile….

 

I played around with SDRs for some time.  But the complexity of the coding and the unwillingness of code writers to share their code made experimentation simply a process of anguishing over appliances that really never did work right.  So I returned to a 30-40 year old superhet architecture and the pleasant learning cycle continues.

 

12AT7?  I must have dumpstered several dozen when I finally gave up on the old Tektronix scopes 25-30 years ago.  There might be a sample or two floating in the junque boxes under the bench.  After torching a nice signal generator while probing around a magic 5 receiver a few years ago, I swore off any association with tubes after I probed a tuning capacitor not realizing it had 150vdc floating above the AC hot chassis.  Needless to say, the 50 ohm calibrated generator was no longer calibrated.  I fixed it and learned quite a bit more doing that than playing with the old magic 5.  50C5, 35W4, 12BE6, 12BA6, 12AV6.

 

The fascination of tubes, which was really only nostalgia over memories of being 13 and a novice CW op listening to my elmer eyeball with the seasoned pros.  Drake made my knees buckle with envy compared to my trusted HW16 with the sweep tube final.  That was before puberty.  A short time later only girls could make me weak in the knees.  Marvelous rigs and simply awesome in my memory.  I played with an R4B a while ago and it made me laugh when compared the ancient features to even a simple rig like a more modern FT450D.  The experience immediately reminded me of buying a 1962 MGB Roadster, only to realize that they had almost no brakes, no sway bar, and went really fast.  How quickly we forget how bad it was back then.

 

It was people that made those old rigs that put people on the moon.  Marvelous history of achievement.  I can only rise to such fantasy in my mind’s eye.

 

Ford-N0FP

 

 

9385 2013-11-13 20:23:46 Dave Miller Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Check out STM32-SDR.com Our project is open source software with published schematics.  Hardware is available at a fair price.   
Commercial off.  

Dave
VE7PKE

Sent from my iPhone

On 2013-11-13, at 20:10, "ford@highmarks.com" <ford@highmarks.com> wrote:

 

…cavity resonator BFO.  That made me smile….

 

I played around with SDRs for some time.  But the complexity of the coding and the unwillingness of code writers to share their code made experimentation simply a process of anguishing over appliances that really never did work right.  So I returned to a 30-40 year old superhet architecture and the pleasant learning cycle continues.

 

12AT7?  I must have dumpstered several dozen when I finally gave up on the old Tektronix scopes 25-30 years ago.  There might be a sample or two floating in the junque boxes under the bench.  After torching a nice signal generator while probing around a magic 5 receiver a few years ago, I swore off any association with tubes after I probed a tuning capacitor not realizing it had 150vdc floating above the AC hot chassis.  Needless to say, the 50 ohm calibrated generator was no longer calibrated.  I fixed it and learned quite a bit more doing that than playing with the old magic 5.  50C5, 35W4, 12BE6, 12BA6, 12AV6.

 

The fascination of tubes, which was really only nostalgia over memories of being 13 and a novice CW op listening to my elmer eyeball with the seasoned pros.  Drake made my knees buckle with envy compared to my trusted HW16 with the sweep tube final.  That was before puberty.  A short time later only girls could make me weak in the knees.  Marvelous rigs and simply awesome in my memory.  I played with an R4B a while ago and it made me laugh when compared the ancient features to even a simple rig like a more modern FT450D.  The experience immediately reminded me of buying a 1962 MGB Roadster, only to realize that they had almost no brakes, no sway bar, and went really fast.  How quickly we forget how bad it was back then.

 

It was people that made those old rigs that put people on the moon.  Marvelous history of achievement.  I can only rise to such fantasy in my mind’s eye.

 

Ford-N0FP

 

 

9386 2013-11-13 20:55:34 William Carver Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
On Thu, 2013-11-14 at 04:10 +0000, ford@highmarks.com wrote:
>
> The fascination of tubes, which was really only nostalgia over
> memories of being 13 and a novice CW op listening to my elmer eyeball
> with the seasoned pros. Drake made my knees buckle with envy compared
> to my trusted HW16 with the sweep tube final. That was before
> puberty. A short time later only girls could make me weak in the
> knees. Marvelous rigs and simply awesome in my memory. I played with
> an R4B a while ago and it made me laugh when compared the ancient
> features to even a simple rig like a more modern FT450D. The
> experience immediately reminded me of buying a 1962 MGB Roadster, only
> to realize that they had almost no brakes, no sway bar, and went
> really fast. How quickly we forget how bad it was back then.

I got a Hallicrafters S-85 as a novice. It worked, but four years later
it went in a dumpster.

My HS friend down the hill got a Hammurland HQ-100. I was in Seattle a
month ago and we had lunch. Haven't seen him for a long time. He
mentioned he still had his HQ-100 but it had died. Brought it home. the
5K 15W dropping resistor to the 105 volt VR tube had opened up. Replaced
it and bingo, it worked. And in several hours, despite some very close
calls, I did NOT stick my finger in there are get zapped.

The dial was almost dead on for 5 and 10 MHz WWV. I put it on the 8640B
at 0.1 uV on 7 MHz and although I didn't put a 3400A RMS meter on the
audio, I'll bet the SNR was over 10 dB.

But...an Si570 LO, H-mode mixer and a homebrew ladder filter would make
it look sick. RX technology has come a long way. Still...tuning around
the SWBC stations and WWV, and listening to guys rag chewing on CW sure
brought back good memories.

W7AAZ

P.S. Since those days I've moved up from a Nash Metropolitan upgraded
with an MGA 4-speed and engine. Driving THAT again would be a nostalgic
experience I don't need. I think it ended up in the same dumpster as the
S-85.
9387 2013-11-14 09:51:10 Richard Johnson Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Hello:

I find the response to "QEX arrived" fascinating.   Obviously it hit a nerve.

Form my point of view i love articles that havegood circuit ideas with schematics. The articles are even better with explanation of how they work and what the trade-offs in design were.  

I read technical magazines/journals/websites to learn about how to design circits and what works for others and what parts people are using.

I find the ALC crystal oscillator circuit in the latest QEX interesting.  But then paying for a magazine for one good page may seam like a poor use of money.  But i think print magazine are having a tough time and unless people who do homebrew for a hobby don't contribute then the quality or qunatiiy of those type of article will not be there.  

There are certainly more than enough antenna articles that's fro sure.  Personally it is not my highest interest.

I think what it takes is a core of extraordinary experimenters, hobby and professional, to contribute  quality articles which means lots of personal time dedicated to the task.

The older people who did most of the articles in previous decades are just not there any more so new people will have to step up or the homebrew stylewill fade.

I love the QRP Pop site.  It is the kind of thing i wish more people could contribute to.

Best regards,
Richard
9388 2013-11-14 10:17:55 Jim Davey Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today
Greetings:

First, I have to apologize for being a posting-reader and not enough of an active participant here, but this is an interesting subject.  I too was a little disappointed in QEX this month, but on a whole, there is enough interesting content over 6 issues a year to justify the cost for me.  This might have been one of those months where the editor was lean on material and decided to include material that he knew would be on the fringe of interest for the typical reader.  So we ought to cut him some slack, but a friendly comment or a submitted article I'm sure would be appreciated.  I personally would like QEX to target the technical level of Ham Radio Magazine, a periodical that I greatly miss.  There has never been an amateur radio monthly magazine that I would devour as ravenously as HR.  It undoubtedly shaped my thinking more than any other source with the exception of the 1960 ARRL Handbook.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone who subscribes to emrfd would want how-to articles.  While EMRFD has quite a few rigs that are described thoroughly enough to duplicate, I think the typical owner of that book would prefer to mine the chapters for ideas and then create something unique of their own.  An example of this is the R2Pro receiver that I built about a year ago and had on display at FDIM this year.  While Rick did the really hard engineering work on the modules, the whole idea of that receiver is that it can take on multiple personalities and serve many different needs.  Mine was a weak signal inhaler for 80m CW.  The boards were easy enough to assemble, but stuffing parts on a board in the right positions is really quite dull.  The excitement came in all the accessories that go with Rick's building blocks.  So the project became a playground for all the following:

1.  Building a super stable half freq vfo and spending literally weeks learning about temperature compensation ala Wes Hayward's QST article
2.  Having a good reason to use my N2PK VNA for something really useful (LO and RF filter evaluation and tweaking)
3.  Trying out W7ZOI's mixed-form LC filters and using his EMRFD design programs  (I love these)
4.  Taking a couple small circuits out of EMRFD and even SSD and re-tweak them to within an inch of death on the SA
5.  Creating a little bit of art in the packaging (I used a gutted FM tuner – I love slide rule dials.  I'm old fashioned)
6.  Recycling some old project boxes and subassembly enclosures to really dress up the insides and improve isolation
7.  Thinking through the issue of ground loops and using the audio foundations and steel chassis of the tuner chassis as a perfect marriage with the DC receiver
8.  Documenting the steps, graphs, screen-shots, and assembly photos along the way in the lab notebook.  

In the end, it was a marriage of the R2Pro elements, ideas that I had shelved for the appropriate moment, opportunity to take several side trips into areas not explored, the urge to try some unique packaging, a chance to integrate some software design tools into the workflow and compare predicted to measured, and some encouragment from Rick that came together in a way no kit or step-by-step article could possibly do.  I'll post some photos in a folder shortly.  

Jim K8RZ


9389 2013-11-14 10:19:50 Michael St. Angel... Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

People get into Amateur Radio for various reasons. The technical aspect of the hobby attracted me and keeps me interested today.

 

I’m like Ford. I love building and tweaking stuff; trying it out on the air, then  going onto the next project. I enjoy the theoretical articles but QEX should interspace them with construction articles.

 

The operating aspect of the hobby is dying because of the competition form the Internet and mobile phones.  The technical and experimentation on of the hobby is thriving because of the ease of communicating ideas and selling kits and parts via the Internet.

 

Mike N2MS

 

9401 2013-11-21 16:14:44 patt896 Re: New QEX arrived in the mail today

John, here is a suggestion for a QRPQ article.  I'm not qualified to author it.  The following is plagiarized from Dale  K9NN:


You might want to check out the activity on the Yahoo Group, PHSNA, which stands for “Poor Ham's Scalar Network Analyzer”.  The url of the group is:

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/PHSNA/info

 

The project is being designed by Jim, N5IB, and Jerry, W5JH and built around an Arduino (Funduino) controller, the cheap AD9850 signal generator board found on Ebay for $5-6, and the W7ZOI power meter.  As the text on the first page of the overview found in the files section of the group says:

“The Poor Ham’s Scalar Network Analyzer

What can you do with an Italian microcomputer, a Chinese signal generator, and some ham ingenuity, for about 50 bucks?”

 

A pcb is being put together for around $10 to go