EMRFD Message Archive 8669
Message Date From Subject 8669 2013-05-21 19:05:48 Steven HELP 8670 2013-05-21 19:13:17 dan edwards Re: HELP
8671 2013-05-21 20:14:31 Ashhar Farhan Re: HELP
In my opinion, the Gnat is highly optimized to provide most performance
from least number of components. As a result, it is difficult to understand
how it works and it is also difficult to trouble shoot it.
What you could start with is something that allows you to build separate
blocks, one at a time. I would recommend starting with a VFO. There is a
thrill in hearing your own 'signal' for the very first time. I had even
managed a contact with another ham two kilometers away by keying the VFO
directly!
A Hartley oscillator made out of JFET is beautifully simple. It as
noise-free a signal source as you can get, it has very very few components
and even if you bungle up with the coil, just swapping the coil ends gets
it going. You can view the waveform on the 'scope, and hear it on the
radio.
Once you are past the VFO, you can either make a transmitter (just add an
amp) or a receiver (a diode detector and an amp). Both are really simple
directions. You could even do both and get a transceiver going!
Do you have a frequency counter? If you don't,you must build one or buy any
of the several available online.
- farhan
8672 2013-05-21 20:19:12 Todd F. Carney / ... Re: HELP
the "Chat with the Designers" sessions online. At that site you'll find
podcasts of previous episodes, complete with "whiteboard" materials. George
Heron N2APB and Joe Everhart N2CX offer these sessions on an interactive
system called Teamspeak. They were once every week, but that was not
sustainable. Now they're every other week. They're up to episode 55 I
think. Each one is on some pretty basic RF topic, but there's also some
more-advanced stuff to keep interest up and moving forward. You don't have
to talk if you don't want to, but there's also a chat box for asking
questions or offering bits of stuff, web sites for more info, etc.
I've got the podcasts of my phone and I listen to them frequently. Sure
beats listening on your AM dial!
73,
Todd
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K7TFC / Medford, Oregon, USA / CN82ni / UTC-8
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QRP (CW & SSB) / EmComm / SOTA / Homebrew / Design
8673 2013-05-22 07:47:43 Mike Heathkit- resurrection?
unrelated to EMRFD, but it appears as though Heathkit might be making a
resurrection. They are taking a (very interesting) survey as to what
might be of interest to "new" Heathkit customers.
I am not affiliated in any way with Heathkit, and I have no financial
interest in this, but I think others on the EMRFD mailing list might
find the survey to be interesting:
http://heathkit.com/survey/index.php/278489?lang=en
I hope I got web link correct. There might be other options for other
languages also.
Mike Dinolfo n4mwp
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]8674 2013-05-22 08:17:26 Lasse Moell Re: Heathkit- resurrection?
offering kits that are interesting and a challange to build.
Love to have a modernized SB220 :), and why not bring out a up-dated
HW7....
Both live and kicking in my house!
/Lasse SM5GLC
On 22 maj 2013 16:47 "Mike" <mdinolfo@erols.com> wrote:
>
>
> My apologies in advance if some of you consider this to be totally
> unrelated to EMRFD, but it appears as though Heathkit might be making
> a
> resurrection. They are taking a (very interesting) survey as to what
> might be of interest to "new" Heathkit customers.
>
> I am not affiliated in any way with Heathkit, and I have no financial
> interest in this, but I think others on the EMRFD mailing list might
> find the survey to be interesting:
>
> <http://heathkit.com/survey/index.php/278489?lang=en>
>
> I hope I got web link correct. There might be other options for other
> languages also.
>
> Mike Dinolfo n4mwp
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]8675 2013-05-22 19:51:13 petervk3ye Re: HELP 8676 2013-05-22 19:51:18 Steven Re: HELP 8677 2013-05-22 19:51:43 blumu Re: Heathkit- resurrection?
one of the most intelligent I have seen and I was pleased to respond.
I greatly look forward to the "Resurrection" - and will start feeding
the piggybank forthwith :-)
Michael
UK
----- Original Message ----- From: Mike
Subject: [emrfd] Heathkit- resurrection?
My apologies in advance if some of you consider this to be totally
unrelated to EMRFD, but it appears as though Heathkit might be making a
resurrection. They are taking a (very interesting) survey as to what
might be of interest to "new" Heathkit customers.8678 2013-05-22 19:51:50 Steven Re: Heathkit- resurrection? 8679 2013-05-22 19:51:58 John Backo Re: HELP
www.wa0itp.com/crystalsetsssb.html
john
AD5YE
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]8680 2013-05-22 20:29:23 Andy Re: Heathkit- resurrection?
up, then dashing them with yet another closure.
I enjoyed the graphic on the main page http://heathkit.com . I do
hope it ends up being more like Sam Clemens, and less like the Skeksis
in "The Dark Crystal" movie ("I'm ... not ... dead ... yet ... (gasp)").
The survey was quite thorough and means someone has high hopes.
Andy8681 2013-05-23 10:45:22 Tim Re: HELP
Check out KD1JV's MMR40, or W7EL's "An Optimized QRP Transceiver", for very practical starter scratch-builts.
EMRFD itself is filled with many small practical weekend project radios too.
QST recently reprinted an updated the "MouseFET" transmitter article.
http://kd1jv.qrpradio.com/ARRLHBC/ARRL_MMR40.html
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/93hb3037.pdf
http://www.qsl.net/wn2a/MOUSEFET6.pdf
8682 2013-05-23 11:36:38 scriabini Re: HELP
It is a treasure.
8683 2013-05-23 14:55:31 Donald Re: HELP 8684 2013-05-23 21:49:15 iam74@rocketmail.... Re: HELP 8685 2013-05-23 22:06:54 Ashhar Farhan Re: Heathkit- resurrection?
stowed away somewhere in the basement... And I have helped a number of
hams assemble their hotwaters too... Happiness is, truely, a warmed up
Hotwater 101
However, now that I look back upon those solder-ups, I know what
always troubled me about those paint-by-numbers kits. The kit often
did all the resistors first, then the caps, then the transistors, etc.
That was bad education.
I'd have preferred manuals that taught me what I was doing. Like,
Let's build the VFO first.. This is the coil and that's the cap ..
Etc. The classical cycle of building and testing one module at a time
is missing from them.
A kit can start off someone in radio pretty inexpensively. However,
kits that educate are hugely amiss. Maybe there is no market for them.
Or maybe no has tried to sell a bag-o-parts with a large pdf that
steps you through the build.
I hope heathkit will spur people to build kits. I sincerely hope some
of them will face minor problems that will provide them with happy
insights into how it actually works. At that point, we may get some
new members to this list!!!
- farhan, the double-807 op
On 5/23/13, Andy <ai.egrps@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just hope this doesn't become an annual thing ... getting our hopes
> up, then dashing them with yet another closure.
>
> I enjoyed the graphic on the main page http://heathkit.com . I do
> hope it ends up being more like Sam Clemens, and less like the Skeksis
> in "The Dark Crystal" movie ("I'm ... not ... dead ... yet ... (gasp)").
>
> The survey was quite thorough and means someone has high hopes.
>
> Andy
>
--
Sent from my mobile device8686 2013-05-24 20:41:35 Steven Re: HELP 8688 2013-05-24 20:41:48 Steven Re: HELP 8702 2013-05-30 06:02:45 Tim BandTech.com Re: HELP
This is done with a mixer(product detector), a bfo, and a vfo, or another bfo, if you like.
These are all necessary stages. It's not a bad core to start from and you can build from there with measurable results.
There are some issues with the block stage method. Impedance matching is going to change each time you adjust one stage. Still, you'll learn what you are after this way. I'm doing something like this, and have settled on RCA jacks for the interconnects.
- Tim AB1AH
8703 2013-05-30 22:44:05 Leonard Re: HELP
I've tested some of them also and you can see that at http://golddredgervideo.com/kitsandparts/index.htm
Leonard
http://kc0wox.com
8705 2013-05-31 07:58:06 Steven Re: HELP 8707 2013-06-03 06:59:05 Tim BandTech.com Re: HELP
You may take parts from old boards and never buy a new part.
Somebody else may have a wall of parts most of which will never get used. Another guy just buys the parts for a kit and has no organizational issues.
Everything right down to the kind of pliers you have at your bench will dictate how you work, and it really is a matter of entering a progression, and realizing that you have to work with what you've got, unless you have unlimited resources, in which case you might accumulate lots of gear and still get nothing done.
There cannot be any one size fits all. I say you should start on a DIP style breadboard, but somebody else might swear you shouldn't do that for RF. I certainly have not gotten very far in this hobby, but still enjoy it. There is no end to the challenges, and sometimes the simplest puzzles arise.
The mechanical side of things matters very much, but the same principles apply. This is not a show stopper. The point is to start the progression, even if it means just winding an electromagnet and touching its terminals to a battery. That is better than some of the higher class alternatives because you can go on from here. Nobody is going to spoonfeed you any better than that. Sadly our culture has lost rather a lot of the handy practice. You can become handy though, and that term with its tactile form is very accurate. Mind the gap...
- Tim AB1AH
8713 2013-06-07 22:39:11 Dana Myers Slightly OT: Theremin (was Re: [emrfd] Re: HELP)