HamGeek usDX 40/20/15 meter QRP radio

 Because I bought one so you do or don't have to.

The Rybakov: Fishing for DX

In the past few days, I've been looking at building another antenna. My random wire is nice, but it's just not cutting it on the HF bands for DXing. 80 meters is a no-go for DX constantly and while I can get it to tune, it just has too much NVIS propagation. Time for something different, and I may have found the answer.

Attempting to Repair a Uniden PRO500D

I bought another CB off of eBay that was a heck of a steal at about $10 or $15 shipped. It's a late 80s/early 90s Uniden CB radio. It's very similar to the PRO510 and PRO520 line of modern-day radios. It's quite basic - no ANL, no PA...just volume, squelch, and 40 channels.

Yet ANOTHER Way to Convert from CB to 10 (CB to CW Part V)

Yep, another way. Just found it out today.

If you want a 10 meter radio that's channelized or if you don't want to try your hand at computer science, try this modification instead! The cost: Well below $10 or even $5. The candidate: A Midland 13-866 (or the 853 if it gets fixed).

Midland 13-857: An Unexpected Joy

 After the initial failure of the 13-853, I decided that I needed to send it off to a local CB shop for repair. In the meantime, I purchased 3 more 23-channel CBs for conversion - just in case :). One of them is a Midland 13-857 - the coolest CB radio I've ever owned.

CB to CW Part 4: Wireless UI

Let me ask you something...

What is the number one thing that you have with you at all times? A pencil? Earphones? How about your cellphone?

In today's post, I'm going to be simplifying my CW CB radio to take away the OLED and rotary encoder to provide you with an easier user interface accessible via a web browser. After this, you should have a roughly-speaking software defined radio!

CB to CW Part 3: The Final Installation

 I graduated college!!! Now what am I going to do?

I DID IT!!!

 I FINALLY DID IT!!! After 6 years of off and on practice, I now can say that CW is my new favorite mode.

Balancing the Unbalanced Truth

Today and after many years of operating with an end fed antenna, I have learned that these antennas give off lots and lots of unwanted radiation, also known as common mode currents. So what's the answer? New antenna? More coax, less coax? Read on and I'll hopefully answer these questions!

Welcome to the Shack crib!

Happy 2025 everyone!

After a solid year of HF inactivity, I am proud and happy to say that my FT-891 is back on the air in a rather permanent matter! The minute our basement was finished up (and I discovered, despite being old, our house is properly grounded!!! Hooray!!!), I began brainstorming ideas on how to build my HF station in the lower dwellings of my house.

My HUGE Pixie Project

 After the failure of the Paraset Pixie, I decided to give up for a bit on any Pixie-related projects. I was frustrated, and rightfully so. I more than likely got a dud but for as cheap as they run, there's not much of a loss there.

However, one does have to appreciate the simplicity of the Pixie circuit. You can spend hours and hours on research, but it all boils down to a simple direct conversion receiver paired with a simple CW transmitter. The work is placed on the final amplifier transistor, as this functions as the power amplifier in transmit, and acts as the mixer on receive. Clever, isn't it? You can see the idea here from the RU-QRP group:

Unfortunately, the Pixie is an abhorrent choice of QRP radio to use. It's crystal controlled, meaning that it lacks frequency agility. The choice of direct conversion on receive leaves the pass band wide open as a barn door, meaning that QSOs will be several kilohertz above and below your spot frequency. The variable potentiometer only helps up to a point. However, this doesn't mean that it is automatically destined for the trash bin. 

Pixie Sixtie (Part III): Harmonic Suppression

 Today I'll discuss a filter that is imperative to have so I can use the Pixie on the air. I'll cover two types - a low-pass and a band-pass, and explain why you may want them on your project.

Pixie Sixite (Part II): The Passive Audio Filter

Today I want to discuss an imperative add-on for the Pixie Sixtie I'm building. This should also apply to any other Pixie kit or similar QRP kit with poor front-end filtering and a wide passband.

NightFire Electronics

A few days ago, I thought that I'd make another purchase off of AliExpress again. I went to the store and picked up a prepaid Visa card since that's what I used last time, only to discover that it was only valid in the US. Dang. Well there went $50...

Along Came Etsy

Now I know what you're thinking...why would you ever shop on Etsy, Owen? What do they have on there that's even remotely close to ham radio? 

Well they have a lot actually. Hams are making things from antennas, LED signs, kits, apparel...the list goes on! What a great way to let the ham community shop for items while giving back to their fellow hams and their families! I might start making antennas and selling them on Etsy, actually.

Since I couldn't buy a Pixie kit on AliExpress due to my dilemma, I decided to go find another Pixie kit. I couldn't use eBay because they don't accept prepaid cards and Amazon just wouldn't recognize my card period. So I got to looking at other sites and Etsy came to mind. Sure enough, one supplier - NightFire Electronics - was one of the first seller choices. And right there it was - a 40 meter Pixie kit waiting for me to put it together. So I ordered that along with an audio Morse Code practice oscillator as another building activity.

The Waiting Game and Thoughts

I placed my order on October 26th and according to USPS, my package should arrive on October 29th - that's a pretty quick turnaround considering that NightFire Electronics is in Florida, which is continuing to clean up after Helene and Milton.

Despite this, my package arrived in a cute cube of a box. Nothing too grand, but sometimes the best things in life come in small packages. I went ahead and unboxed my pack of goodies and sure enough, the two kits I had ordered were provided as promised and promoted. 

The Pixie

To my surprise, the Pixie isn't that much bigger than the generic ones you get off of eBay. The PCB is a bit thicker and seems a bit more robust too. 

This one still uses varactor tuning but I have learned a lot about varactor tuning in the past few days. Basically, when a diode is placed backwards (cathode side towards the voltage source, anode to ground or negative source) it exhibits a phenomenon known as junction capacitance. As the voltage is increased or decreased, the capacitance varies. There are specific diodes that serve as varactors such as the MV209 used in the MFJ Cub, but common 1N400x series will work just fine if used as fine tuning, such as RIT. The Pixies use these diodes for varactor RIT tuning, which provides a small variable capacitance and receive offset of between 700 and 900Hz - perfect for copying CW! If you really wanted to, you could substitute an actual varactor in place of this to have a wider tuning window. You'd just have to adjust for offset every time you keyed up.

I purchased the Pixie kit with a base frequency of 7.030MHz. Now, I could keep buying up crystals and swapping them out to change frequencies, or I could use a variable capacitor to shift the frequency by about a kilohertz or so. Your mileage may vary, especially if you're using an HC49/U (tall-cased, more pull) versus an HC49/S (short-cased, small pull). Also, don't permanently solder in the crystal. You can use pin headers to easily change out crystals or VXO modules.

The Pixie did not come with any output jacks. Rather it was provided with four 2-pin screw terminal. This shouldn't be a problem and the input/output jacks should be relatively easy to come by. I already have tons of BNC panel mounts, a panel mount DC barrel jack, and several 3.5mm jacks.

This Pixie has an additional capacitor in parallel with the low pass filter inductor. You can add a value of 130pF to further attenuate spurious emissions, although the schematic says that this component isn't used. I find it to be absolutely necessary, as I have been thoroughly analyzing the ineffective output of the Pixie's filter. This capacitor helps significantly reduce the second harmonic to a dip, which thereby reduces the third, fourth, etc. by more than -25dB or so from the fundamental. It works because it is resonant on or near the second harmonic, which is 14MHz.

Code Practice Oscillator

While I liked my Arduino Nano CPO, it just wasn't small enough to tote around. I ended up purchasing another oscillator kit based on a twin-T oscillator configuration. This is fed into an LM386 to amplify the output, which is a sine wave at around 700Hz.

Depending upon the kit you have, you can change a resistor in one of the T-networks to change the tone. So if you're not comfortable with 700Hz you can experiment with resistor values to see what you like. As an added bonus, I'm thinking of adding on an Arduino to the key input to generate random words and phrases. A digital pin fed to an optocoupler and fed into the keying input should do the trick just fine.

Conclusions

Simply put, I will most definitely be buying more things from NightFire. I feel that they are reasonably priced and are dedicated to making electronic kits accessible for all. One kit that looks cool and is easy to assemble is their ghost detector. Whether or not it works...well, that's for you to decide. In practicality, it is an overly-amplified LED detector that picks up electromagnetic changes nearby. 

That's not the only things NightFire offers. They offer everything from amplifiers, Arduino kits, capacitor/resistor kits, and so much more! So if you're looking for some fun kits to build either to pass the time or practice your soldering skills, look no further than NightFire Electronics!

Realistic TRC-412 Emergency CB

It's an emergency CB radio! How ingenious! Guess who bought one? ME!!!

The PeaNOT: A 74HC04-based QRP Transmitter

As a computer scientist, we deal with several ICs that serve many purposes. Some are microcontrollers. Some are logic gates. Some are just...rather interesting. There's one IC in particular that has its uses as a minimalist oscillator or transmitter with at least 6 components: the 74HC04, the legendary CMOS inverter.

My Thoughts on Citizens Band

 So I'm not one for making opinion posts...but...

I want to make it clear - CB radio is what got me into ham radio. I remember going down to clean out our basement one day when I was about 10 and I stumbled upon a bluish-grey metal box with a mic coming out of it. It was a Roadmaster (Royal Sound) RE4000 CB radio - and it changed my life forever. And for all you CBers reading this post - I hope that I can speak for all of you...

The Ten Minute Transmitter

 Decades ago, a ham by the name of Steve, G4RAW, conceptualized a CW transmitter in a magazine article capable of putting out up to 1 watt of RF power over the air. It was so barebones that even the newly-licensed amateur, with little to no experience, could throw it together, tune it up, and possibly make a QSO in a matter of minutes. No, not hours - minutes. 10 minutes to be exact. This rig is called the Ten Minute Transmitter.

Antenna Adventure

Hi again!

The end of October is almost here and with it comes winter weather, especially around these parts. A few days ago, I was told North Dakota was in a winter storm warning with 12+" of snowfall expected! Of course, I'm sure Northwest Missouri is next.

Which brings me to today's post - antennas. Currently, I am running a roughly 29' random wire antenna fed with a 9:1 unun around the ceiling of my room. It works, but we recently installed GFCI outlets in another room that trip every time I'm on a band below 15 meters. Obviously, there's too much RF for my house to contain, and the only option now is to put my antenna outside. So strap in, because this will be a thorough and long adventure! Oh, and feel free to correct me in the comments below... I'm still learning.

The Many Wonders of QRP Circuits

 If you're like me, you like to build things and experiment with them - you constantly ask yourself, "how does this work?" QRP operation has brought me to that question many times, and today, I want to discuss a few QRP designs I happened to stumble upon. I'm sure you've also seen these circuits across the web. Today, I'd like to showcase some simple transceivers that you can build in a very short amount of time for almost nothing!