I ordered myself one of Hans Summers’ QRSS beacon kits before Christmas, and it arrived a few days ago. Yesterday, I started tinkering it together, and today got it hooked up and began testing.
First, the good news:
- The oscillator is running.
- I was able to adjust it with the trimmer to get it into the MEPT portion of the 30m band.
- The AVR is alive and running.
- Tone output works, and it is detecting the 6s per dit QRSS mode properly.
But… all is not well. Here’s an example output recorded with Argo on my FT-817 placed adjacent, without any antenna at all. The QRSS beacon is transmitting into a 1W 47 ohm resistor that serves as a dummy load.
As you can see, the output is a bit wavy, and looks a bit unclean as well, with lots of spurs. But the primary thing is the deviation is only about 1.5 Hz (I recorded this in 10 second dit mode on Argo). I tried adding some additional twists to the gimmick cap, but that didn’t seem to help much.
I suspect the general poor quality of the output may be because I’m using a 5v power supply of unknown quality (perhaps some additional filter caps across the power leads may be helpful?). I’ll probably try to make a longer gimmick tomorrow. I also am going to get it hooked up to the scope to adjust the power properly as well. It’s also not in a box yet, and my dining room table is a bit drafty, so thermal drift is a distinct possibility.
Anyone else have any ideas on how to tame the ragged castle walls?
Addendum: I couldn’t let it sit: it’s one o’clock in the morning and I decided to make a new gimmick and try it out. And, of course, it worked a lot better, giving about 30Hz of swing! Ouch. I trimmed the length down, and unwound it a bit more, and now it’s down to a more respectable 8 or 9 Hz. I’ll probably unwind it a bit more when I get it in the case and setup for final operation.
But here’s an odd thing: I jumpered it for 6 second dits by jumpering the 2-5 connection at the top of the AVR, but it’s acting as if is set to 15s dits. Do I need to ground pins 5 and 6 as well? Perhaps they are floating?
Addendum2: I suppose I should have read the Important note on this page.