| Monday, April 9th, 2012 |
8:10 pm
[megadog]
 |
Tuner-tastic.
I've been doing various radio-stuffs over the last day or so. Experimentation [like putting it in the microwave to see if it heated] showed that a Polythene Tesco 'value' kitchen chopping-board provided a good low-RF-loss insulating baseboard; couple this with a 'Roller-Coaster' variable inductor and a 300pF 2.5Kv-rated variable capacitor acquired a couple of weeks back and the result is somewhat obvious. 
I've got a rather nice metal case into which the whole thing will be fitted - once I've cut out a sane front-panel for it and drilled the rear panel to take both a 'N'-connector for the transmitter-side and some solid terminal-posts for the antenna. The design is this: 
Though I am not bothering with the antenna-current meter. |
| Thursday, March 22nd, 2012 |
9:18 pm
[megadog]
|
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| Saturday, November 12th, 2011 |
5:25 pm
[megadog]
|
HF radio conditions are ++good. While romping in the forest, 30 watts of SSB to a 1/4-wave whip antenna on my battery-powered PRC320 gets me lots of US/Caribbean/Central American contacts. Which is really not bad going from Europe. |
| Friday, October 21st, 2011 |
7:18 pm
[megadog]
|
The only way is Up!
HF conditions seem to be looking up: today I worked lots of Central-Americans on 28MHZ, which is not bad going for a mere 30 watts PEP from the UK. |
| Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 |
8:31 am
[keeganfox]
 |
Antenna Tuner!
I made an antenna tuner! I used this basic design from HCDX, but I decided to use the coil from this design as I liked the exponential winding idea. It just seemed better to have more different coils, than a tap every ten turns. Do I know what I'm doing? Not really, but I doubt either can really be wrong. Most people who know me know I can be a workshop packrat at times. But it's not bad, it's for projects like this! 
It's made almost entirely out of leftovers and free things. The magnet wire is leftover from the loop antenna project, the wood was free, the cardboard tube was an unusual small diameter and quite stout, wire is from dead computer power supplies, knobs and components from an old Akai receiver from the dump, acrylic was free, and screws were spares/leftovers. I had to buy the 12 pin rotary switch, which was all of $4.
I haven't tested it yet...
Thoughts and suggestions? |
| Monday, May 23rd, 2011 |
3:10 pm
[keeganfox]
|
Things for sale or trade
Since I'm living in New Zealand now, I don't need a lot of 110V items, and since a couple are radio related, I thought I'd see if anyone here wanted them. First is an Icom AD-55A power supply. Input 110VAC 60Hz, Output 16VDC 1.5A (max). Originally supplied with an Icom R-75, and in as new condition. Second is a TrippLite IB-6 Isobar surge protector. I used it with a HiFi system, but it's good for all sorts of sensitive electronics. Made in the USA. Make an offer, but please consider my shipping costs from New Zealand. |
| Thursday, May 19th, 2011 |
6:14 pm
[ron_overdrive]
 |
|
| Sunday, May 15th, 2011 |
8:22 am
[keeganfox]
|
I was playing with the old Icom R-75 the other day and decided that it would be good to get something for VHF and UHF as well. I like Icom, and ideally it would pick up where the R-75 leaves off at 50MHz. Bonus would be 220V power supply, and comply with New Zealand law. Does anyone have anything like that for sale? Any recommendations? |
| Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 |
11:20 pm
[tigerpaw]
 |
For the furryhams attending FCN what frequencies will people be monitoring for QSOs and other general chats.. Also I see the foxhunt is scheduled for Sunday, if you read this are you still providing the fox transmitter sparkybluefox? xposted to other groups. |
| Sunday, January 9th, 2011 |
7:35 pm
[megadog]
|
My little "Codar AT5"-clone 3.5MHz AM transmitter has melted its RF-output 6BW6. Seems they don't like 320 volts B+ coupled with 100% anode-modulation. |
| Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 |
4:38 pm
[megadog]
 |
Given the interest in SOTA, IOTA, chasing DXCC 'Countries' etc, I'm surprised that no ham has yet launched a DXpedition to activate the The Islets of Langerhans. Current Mood:  amused |
| Monday, November 8th, 2010 |
7:56 pm
[megadog]
|
Glowbottles!
I've just taken ownership of a 5Z4GT
.This is for my RCA AR88-D receiver. The original design used a 5Y3 directly-heated rectifier; this was all they had back in 1944. The downside of a directly-heated rectifier in equipment where the other valves are indirectly-heated is that the rectifier's heater comes up to working temperature before the other valves have started drawing power - so the various smoothing and decoupling capacitors get hit with a higher voltage when the radio is first switched on. Fitting an indirectly-heated rectifier means its output comes up more in-step with the other valves' ability to draw current, so the warmup voltage spike is less. That's important in a radio that's over 60 years old! |
| Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 |
3:14 pm
[alohawolf]
 |
Rainfurrest Talk in...
For those coming to RainFurrest who are Hams we are using 445.975, Simplex, with a Tone of 103.5. |
| Monday, September 20th, 2010 |
2:15 pm
[insane_kangaroo]
 |
|
| Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 |
10:11 pm
[yappyfox]
 |
www.furryhams.org
http://www.furryhams.org
We have undergone a change! This is hopefully for the better. We will be able to do more customization, have better security, and have many more options for the users with this change. Your Username (callsign) and password should be exactly the same as it was on the old site. If you don't remember your password, there is now an option to have it emailed to you. There were 3 previous users that did not have email addresses defined. Unfortunately, those users got purged, since there is no way to accommodate them without an email address. You can re-register and add yourself back in. |
| Monday, July 12th, 2010 |
11:01 pm
[hastka]
 |
RTTY revisited... and just checking in
Just figured I'd drop a line again to see if anyone might have come across a place where I could get my greasy mitts on an old Model 19, to replace the one my parents mercilessly scrapped several years ago. Sheesh, parents, what have they ever done for me?! ;) Also it looks like it's been a while since anyone said much on the group. Any good Field Day stories or anything? I've been in a bit of a lull while getting situated in the house here. Can't quite afford decent HF gear, and try as I might I just can't really get "into" VHF. I've been pondering getting into satellite stuff, but that's a whole new quantum state of financial hurt. So anyway, there's some fodder for discussion... is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me.... |
| Friday, May 7th, 2010 |
4:55 pm
[keeganfox]
 |
GPS Antenna
I figured since GPS used radio signals, someone here might be interested in reading this. On my last hike I was getting rather poor GPS reception under the trees, so I decided to test the GPS antenna I found in my car to see if that boosted performance any. I stripped the coaxial cable and poked the end in and results were promising. Today I cut the cable down from about 4 meters to a much more manageable 1 meter, and fabricated a connector to fit the GPS's MCX connector in the back. I used a female bullet connector as the shield and cut it down and re-rolled it to fit inside, and soldered the shield on. The center wire was just soldered for rigidity. But how well does it work? ( Read more... ) |
| Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 |
12:09 pm
[ron_overdrive]
|
EME DX
Just got this via a mailing list I'm on and thought I'd share. Happy DX'ing! Cross Posted to FurryHams
( Read more... ) |
| Saturday, March 27th, 2010 |
7:20 pm
[megadog]
|
Tracking down the burblies.
After several weeks of enduring frustration I've finally tracked down the cause of various annoying HF-band 'burblies'. Seems they're not coming from the telco-side of the ADSL after all; they're leakage from the 100Mbit/sec hard-wired Ethernet circuits from the Cisco-1600 to the webserver, the PC etc. Which explains why my throwing ferrite toroids, clip-on filters etc against the telco-side has been an abject failure. I've just ordered a fistful of shielded-twisted-pair RJ45 cables which - with luck - will terminate the wandering burble-monster. It's rather annoying to be enjoying a nice leisurely natter on 3.615MHz AM only to have it wiped-out when the locally generated wobblies wander on down. Still, I can't complain: 7.5 watts of double-sideband full-fat-carrier AM from my PRC320 earlier today got me a comment of "you're sounding a lot louder than you should" from Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Current Mood:  hungry |
| Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 |
12:22 am
[hrrunka]
 |
A Black Art?
There must be some secret gestures and incantations *1 involved in the process of attaching a PL-259 to a length of RG-213 which I have yet to discover... *1 ...or, possibly, a blowtorch or an arc-welder... ;) Current Mood: a mite perplexed |
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radiofurs
