Well, I found a BNC connector, hooked up my antenna, and voila! Before testing it, I tried listening up on my FT-817, and the band seemed pretty dead. But the DC40B had signals!

First powerup of my DC40B

I can hear a bit of hum, which I suspect will only get better once I use a better power supply (I was just using a wall wart) and get it in its case, and its wide, but you can definitely hear signals. At the end, some QRM comes in and spoils it, but I’m encouraged.

Addendum: My morse is pretty rusty, but the loudest signal at the beginning of the recording is a QSO between K6LQ and W6JHQ. W6JHQ would appear to be about 360 miles away, just west of Victorville.

Back in October of last year, I was eagerly putting together one of Doug Hendrick’s DC40b kits, a nifty little transceiver, complete with a nice metal case. Here’s where the assembly got to prior to today:

brainwagon » Blog Archive » DC40B, Day 4, and stupidity on my part….

Yes, I didn’t install a chip backwards, I merely screwed up and swapped the op-amp (8 pins) and the Atmel chip (similarly 8 pins). At the time, I sent an email to Doug and he kindly sent me replacement parts, and they sat in my “box o’ radio stuff” for quite a while. Until today.

Today, I dusted them off, and then tried to figure out where I left the rig. In the end, I just plugged in the new chips, hooked up a set of ear buds, and fired it up.

This time, and voila. The AVR is running! I hooked up paddles, and the keyer seems to work fine. I can hear the QSK thump in a little bit when the receiver kicks back in, but all seems well. I’ll drag out my oscilloscope and test voltages and the like: when I left it last time I thought the oscillator wasn’t actually oscillating, but now that things are hooked up, maybe all will be better. Now, all I need to do is find the two parts that I need to finish it: the BS170 that serves as the final amplifier and the BNC connector so I can hook my antenna to it.

And then, I’ll have to brush up on my CW. I found my Gordon West CW CDs too. 🙂