brainwagon

Well, the other I2C based breakout board I got from Sparkfun was for a Microchip MCP4725 DAC. It’s a 12 bit device, and will eventually do duty controlling the voltage controlled oscillator in my beacon transmitter. For tonight though, I just wanted to make sure I could program it, so I soldered on some header […]

In considering the long term accuracy of the RTC chip that I was playing around with, I did some additional thinking and reading. My understanding is the error comes from the accuracy of the crystal oscillator: the 32.768Khz timing crystal probably has an accuracy of 20ppm or even larger. My guess is that this is […]

Okay, this is no big deal: lots of people have done it before. But while I was watching TV, I soldered some header pins to the DS1307 based real time clock board I got from sparkfun.com , and coded up this simple program to read the time from it. I’d never really used the Wire […]

WARNING: pontificating and ranting ahead. You’ve been warned. Tom pointed out that I had an inadvertent markup error which ended up dropping several paragraphs of this post. It is now corrected. Julian, G4ILO followed up yesterday’s post about technology not being good for ham radio with a nearly equally confusing one today entitled Platform for […]

Over at G4ILO’s blog, he responded to the recent Wired article about ham radio by asking “Is technology good for ham radio?” with his answer being “no”. G4ILO’s Blog: Is technology good for ham radio? The statement which caused me to blow milk out my nose was this one: The more high-tech ham radio becomes, […]

I always like reading G3XBM’s blog: he’s been interested in all kinds of cool QRP and LF stuff that I find really intriguing. What makes it even more great is that he’s decided to apply his significant talents toward designing a very simple sideband rig for 10m. It looks like he’s aiming toward a dual […]

I haven’t even got this on the air yet, and I’m already imagining all sorts of interesting possibilities to improve and change the basic beacon design. (This is a credit to Hans for creating something simple enough to build, and yet interesting enough to inspire.) I’ve been brainstorming a bit this morning, and thought that […]

The Southgate Amateur Radio News is reporting that ARRISSAT-1 will not be deployed during an EVA from the ISS this week as previously planned. It now appears that it will remain on board until July. No Wednesday deployment of ARISSat-1 | Southgate Amateur Radio News. 3. AMSAT learned on Friday morning, 11 FEB 11 that […]

So, today I drove down to HSC in Sunnyvale and got (among other things) some trimmer capacitors so I could tune my beacon, and when I got back, I set to work. I pulled the 22pF capacitor and put in my trimmer, and then hooked up my SDR-IQ receiver to the laptop so I could […]

My evening’s hacking will probably be in coercing an Arduino to do DFCW (at least) and may SMT Hellschrieber. Of course, as soon as you say something like that, you find that others have been there ahead of you. Witness AA6DY’s nice description of his QRSS operations: QRSS operations from AA6DY.

My regenerative receiver was annoying me, and I wanted to do some soldering tonight anyway, so I thought I’d tack together a really simple transmitter project. I wound a coil, and spent about 45 minutes tacking a simple QRSS transmitter (really just a Colpitts oscillator) which should dump about 14mw of power into a 50 […]

I’ve listened to the SolderSmoke podcast for quite a while, and you’d think I would have availed myself of Bill’s sage wisdom. He’s previously made mention of the endless fun and rapture he’s had tinkering with crystal radios, carried away to the sounds of heavenly lutes (okay, I’m extrapolating here). But he’s also mentioned that […]

G4ILO has a post on his blog grumbling about the increasing use of USB technology in amateur radio: G4ILO’s Blog: USB technology du jour. As seems typical with many things he talks about, I disagree with virtually all of his points. My position: I absolutely hate special purpose cables. My FT-817 has some wacky DIN-6 […]

Okay, I’ve been wanting to actually do a little radio project for a while. So, instead of cleaning and organizing my home office some more, I decided to go ahead and tack something together. So, the project I settled on was N1TEV’s “Ultra Simple W1AW Reciever” from the May 1997 QST. I had most of […]

David Rowan of Wired.co.uk has an article over on their website: Why ham radio endures in a world of tweets (Wired UK) He waxes philosophically about the thrill of establishing long distance radio communication, about receiving QSL cards, and gives mention to the role that ham radio plays in time of emergency. I hear these […]