Sunday, December 13, 2015

Fying Pig

Sometimes there are peoples despite their efforts not able to be on air. I have done research. Put this picture and you will be able to be on air ssb-fone.




So, enjoy and follow the HAM cult with full faith. Enjoy Beacons and Rag-chew...

NB:-

After passing the hurdle, I am feeling little boring. My signal is low, vfo not stable, it moves down the freq, On air peoples are very nice gives first times but I am trying to figure  who will allow me break-in second time, who will just ignore, who will talk, who will be friendly, etc etc.... hope to blend in soon. so keeping my over short, interested only in signal reports & c u down the log.

name :- Indrajit,
qth:- Junagadh, near Rajkot, Gujarat state
callsign:- VU3INJ
bands of operations:- 20 meter and 40 meter qrp, vfo
dsb tx on 14194kc, few dc receiver.....

Thursday, December 10, 2015

ITR40-20

I said lets do something different, a basic level thing. We have commercial rigs, we have some homebrew rigs and some homebrew rigs are as par with commercial rigs.

But there is a gap between something called pixie to R7 Dayton receiver. Even simple than a dc receiver, which a novice or a new entrant in ham radio can build without any problem and experience some RF and learn to use cw-tx , cw-rx , antenna, etc  But there is a penalty to simplicity. Only a single frequency. You are tied to a single freq, I have a dream to make a small portable full working airworthy cw transceiver using xtal. Similar to MUZO.

I am making two receivers using cheap and easily found 3.579mhz, 7.159mhz, 14.318mhz xtals for band 40meter and 20 meter.

cw tx using 7.159mhz for 40 meter and 14.318mhz for 20 meter. I have made a pcb pattern. No hole. You place the components on pcb and its done.

have a look






Parts list

ITR40-ITR20

Sr No
Item No.
Value
Note
1
Q1
BC549C


2
R1
2K2


3
R2
1K


4
R3
220


5
R4
100


6
R5
10


7
R6
10


8
C1
0.1


9
C2
0.1


10
C3
100,25V


11
C4
33P


12
C5
33P


13
C6
33P


14
Q2
BF494


15
Q3
BC549C


16
R7
10K


17
R8
47K


18
R9
470


19
R10
4K7


20
R11
10


21
C8
0.1


22
R15
470


23
R20
470 Preset


24
D1
1N4148


25
D2
1N4148


26
C13
100p


27
Q4
BC547


28
R12
100K


29
R13
2K2


30
R14
100


31
C9
100p


32
C10
100p


33
C11
33p


34
C12
0.1


35
Q5




36
R16
2K2


37
C14
0.1


38
C15
10, 25


39
C16
100p


40
R17
1M


41
R18
4K7


42
C17
10,25


43
R19
10




That's it folks.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Linear Amplifier Problem- 3

A friend experienced a problem and solved it. first image depeicts the problem and second image depicts the solutions.

Question :---
My friend Vadivel requested in the Indian Homebrewer forum ::  " Help Needed on MOSFET Linear amplifier. I'm using Linear amp used with Minima TRX. Its working very fine. But the low pass filter is getting too hot / smoke after TX of 10~20 secs. I used 2x TV balun glue together and 3 turns of 28 SWG. SWR is corrected with the use of Pi network ATU. Any suggestions welcome. "

 The problem:---

The RF theory :---

The low pass filter was made with the pig nose baluns. But, IMHO opinion it can not handle the passing of 15watt rf.  If  core gets burned or becoming hot, its probably got damaged due to the heat. Please do not use it further. discard that piece and never use this baluns as filter eliment. they can handle just 1watt.

In my experiments I have found that, You need atleast minimum 4 big pignose baluns stacked for linear amplifier transformer.

The solutions :---


The coil is made over the felt pen body. The sketch pen body is the beast material to make the coil for low pass filter. Its diameter is uniform, widely available and most of the time they are in standard size.

A friend suggested  to use air core. And our great elmer shri  Dev Rama Prabhu say's, let me reproduce in his own word ::
Dear sir, if any inductor core is becoming hot it means it is very lossy! Just replace with one more core as these cores are not repeatable! Otherwise as Mr Rajesh has suggested use aircore and I always use aircore with Teflon formers. 73

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Madras Disaster, december 2015

I was seeing the human tragedy at Madras(Chennai, India),due to the natures fury. Even if nature's one element increases Air, Fire, Water,Earth all becomes cause for the disaster. If we are lucky the disaster is small, but there is still loss to the humane and infrastrutcture and in long-run to economy. First thing, we wish in this situation is water, food, hygine, warmth blanket and message from our family they are ok, we are trapped here, save us. In this last thing related to the communications, as a ham we can help them a little.

I look around, am i disaster ready ? Yep, my antenna is up. i have light(electricity), what If ? my light goes out,,, for 5 hours i can use a 40 meter analogue receiver on car battery. After that nothing. sorry, i do not have transceiver...

What ? i can not afford commercial set up, not able to build one, and great ham not able to provide the pre-build air worthy transceiver. But, there are many designs, bitx, vu3gcm,rm96,nr60,vu2atn,various dc receiver,r7, gr7, jota,HF1 etc etc.... there is a gap of simple tech. We have very hi-quality tech,sofisticated, digital, software but not a simplest one.

In the early years of 60-70 our maritime mobile were able to accurately transmit the distres signal in morce ? they were right on frequency ? how did they do it.

Answere is simple 2182kc, 6725kc , 455 to 465, 500kc etc were maritime frequency. I have seen the emergency set powered by a crank shaft, CW, DSB with portable vertical antenna and they all were xtal controlled transmitter. I have seen fixed frequency receiver also to receive 2182kc the local oscillator was 2682kc xtal, IF was 500kc. So, you got two frequency receiver. Damn ! the tech is there.

Our, need of the day is small powered cw or fone transmitter with portable antenna so that atleast they are able to radiate some effective signals around say 50km from the locations and if power is there and antenna is high then full range with big linear. We should go with new tech, that is progress but at the end of the days the morce code will come handy. When power is out, there will be less QRM.

There are many xtal cheaply available i.e 14.166mhz, 14.318mhz, 7.159mhz, 3.597mhz, 1843kc, and 10.000+(4.000 / 4194 / 4433/4286) for twenty meter, 11059-4.000 for forty meter. All our problem of hams not on air can be solved. VU2FI sir, if we import some xtals in bulk from dx or specially made say 14194kc. Let us make some simple design of one to two watt transmitter, simple transistors as active device, less dependance on special ferrite, and simple receiver (DC or Superhet )with sensitive enough to work another local qrp. If person is on air, we can depend on it. our air wave will be busy and no one has the chace to grab it up. Guys, think over it. otherwize as you have seen the everage age of hams at hfi2015 was more than 45 plus. Farhan we expect & request you to help as you can think out of the box, it is out of your league or not intune with what you are doing but we seek you to help. VU2RBI, VU2FI this is answere to your quest what will help ham not to dry up.


***
I put this ideas to the indian and foreign hams. From the response/comments I can say, may be we are not realizing the potential of this old technology. May be electricity and civilization stays with us forever ... BEWARE  there will be few black days also.........
***
My one friend put this on net. I liked the content, as it is useful.

Most Chennaites and people in rest of TN have only WhatsApp connectivity, so please copy this
story and spread through Whatsapp.

As the rescue operations are underway in Chennai, the focus should now shift to how best people can ensure public health and combat the outbreak of water-borne diseases as it is often difficult to maintain hygiene during clean-up operations.
The News Minute has compiled a list of dos and don'ts based on our conversations with doctors. Most of these... are home remedies that you can execute even without power and medical supply. Spread the word and stay safe.

> Using sari as a filter can reduce the chance of cholera and the water-borne diseases. This has proved to be an effective method of filtration in flood-ravaged countries like Bangladesh, with researchers from the US establishing. While boiling water and then filtering it would be more effective but in cases where people have no access to gas or heating mechanisms, filtering water using the folds of a sari is better than no filtration at all.

> If you have no access to drinking water, collect rain water in containers placed on your terrace. This can then be boiled and filtered for use.

> Do not stand in stagnant water. With sewage water getting mixed with all water sources, standing in these stagnant pools can lead to leptospirosis.

> If your food stock is running low at home, take a litre of boiled water and add 5-6 spoons of sugar and 1 spoon of salt. Drinking this at regular intervals will help in keeping the hydration levels high.

> In areas where the water is knee-deep, add bleaching powder or salt to it. It works as an effective disinfectant and also prevent bacterial diseases from getting transmitted.

> For those with access to medicines, stock up on ORS packets to prevent diarrhoea and antiemetic drugs to prevent vomiting.

> Have freshly cooked food that's been heated to boiling point. For those with power, avoid refrigerated food to the maximum extent possible
***
It seems our senior ham VU2FI had set-up a emergency communication room at Banglore and handled 3000 messages and helped in disaster relief in 4 days. Hats off to those hams. Freq was 7070kc, and ecolink , VHF etc were used. Hope to hear and learn from their experience for disaster preparations.
***
It seems the SIARS-Chennai , also have its own view. Will collate it after they speak it loud.
***
Personally I have no bias, I welcome all the voices pro-con and others. Life is multi-dimensional, if we have different views, viewpoints then better we understand the situation.

 IMHO we need hams who can interface with giant multi head  government on whom we depend for our joy. There are who really wants to work in field and shy away from all limelight. There are those who comes on air, there are those who just  tinkers.

It is a very expensive hobby. I have seen many persons who also developed other hobbies, numismatics, photo, tracking, mountaineering etc and survived the harshness of ham hobby.

So, ultimate aim should be enjoyment. Whichever way you find joy enjoy it.