News, Updates and Other Minutiae
Help wanted Can anyone help identify a piece of music from the 70's? See the home page for the details
November 2021 A desk lamp mod (well, more of a bodge) - halogen to LED conversion using LED strip. Find it under the 'Misc' category.
August 2021 The Simple DDS VFO has been updated to add band change functionality. It is on it's own page in the homebrew menu.
June 2021 Battery Monitor project updated and finalised.
May 2021 Added another Rant about the scabby manuals that come with stuff these days. Added page and files for a 3d printed box for the Noise Canceller courtesy of Gary VK6GS
January 2021 Paypal button added to Noise Canceller page. Updated the PK3 programming adapter - some spare pcb's available.
Privacy Policy uploaded. It may be viewed at the Privacy Policy link in the footer. As of October 2017, I will be asking for a donation in exchange for providing custom modified code for my projects to help keep this site available. GPDR and all that stuff In accordance with various bits of legislation around the world, either currently in force, about to come into force or proposed, you will now find that annoying "We use cookies" notice at the top of this website. The full Privacy Policy is available at the Privacy Policy link in the footer at the bottom of the page. (If you don't know what GPDR is, Google it. Real scary shit for ANYBODY with a web presence.)
The Gear in the Shack
Some photo's of the equipment in the shack. First up, an FT7. Considered to be a fine rig in it's time when it came out in the late 1970's. I haven't fired this one up yet, so I have no idea what condition it is in operationally. Cosmetically, it's not too bad, but then nobody can see it over radio, can they.
Next up is an FT757GX. From it's serial number, it is one of the very first one's from circa 1983. I bought this one cheap with a receive problem according to the previous owner. Why did I buy it with a fault? Well, one of my activities is PIC programming, so I want to look into doing a replacement cpu for this rig at some stage.
The fault is supposed to be that it drops out on receive occasionally but tx is fine. Most likely causes of this (in no particular order), faulty/aging xtals, faulty trim-caps in the oscillators and a very common one, faulty diodes (this model uses diode switching instead of relays for much of it's rf switching). There are relays used for power switching and it's possible one of these is faulty. On the test equipment side of things, I have a Marconi TF2015 signal generator, a CTE 1gHz spectrum analyser, UNI-T 100MHz digital storage scope and various multimeters on the commercial side. Amongst the homebrew test equipment, there is an LC meter built from information on the net, an RF Powermeter designed by OZ2PU and published in Elektor magazine, various frequency counters and a valve/tube GDO.
Marconi TF2015 signal generator. 10MHz - 500MHz range.
CTE spectrum analyser. This unit has internal batteries so that it can be used in the field. All I can say is, you need muscles upon muscles to cart this any significant distance. It is a really heavy brute with batteries in.
The LC meter built from information on the 'net. 16F628 PIC based.
OZ2PU RF Powermeter. Contains an AD8307 and 16F876 and good to approx 500MHz.
As you can see, the GDO is complete but in pretty rough condition. I'm still debating whether to power it up or not (after doing the necessary safety checks, of course).
