brainwagon

For the first time in a couple of years, I got all my equipment back online in the WSPR mode. I used to run WSPR primarilly with my little Yaesu FT-817, but this time, I chose to go ahead and use my ICOM IC-735, which isn’t a really all that great at WSPR-ing: it is, […]

Lots of people have said that RTL-SDR dongles that they have been receiving don’t have ESD protection diodes on the antenna inputs, which makes them susceptible to damage, particularly when you hook larger, gain antennas to them. I had read many notes about the EZTV645 that I bought which indicated didn’t have the BAV99 diodes. […]

I haven’t been doing much work on ham radio lately. In fact, I haven’t even had my IC-735 hooked up since before Thanksgiving. But today, I decided to try to dust off the old equipment and see if I could get it powered up. After much digging around for all the right cabling, I got […]

Just a brief note: this website has some pretty extensive pictures of the inside and outside of the same model of RTLSDR dongle I bought. It also shows that it does not have the ESD protection diodes in place, so it’s possible you could fry the tuner input by having a static discharge directly hit […]

I’ve already got a couple of software defined radios: a nice SDR-IQ from RFSpace which covers up to 30Mhz, and an original Funcube Dongle Pro which covers from 64Mhz to 1700Mhz. I like both, but I must admit: they were fairly expensive. Still, in some ways they have spoiled me for conventional receivers in at […]

The other day I was in Ham Radio Outlet, and while strolling around I noticed a new VHF book published by the RGSB. And for some resaon, it made me think: I’ve got three different dual HTs, and an FT-817 which can work on 2m/70cm, why aren’t I doing more on VHF/UHF? I had a […]

This weekend was kind of a loss for computer/geek/rc airplane/ham radio, but it was off the charts fun for me and the missus. We did an unplanned day trip up to the Napa valley on Saturday, and then when I realized that I had left my lucky hat at restaurant, returned on Sunday to retrieve […]

Like many people, I live in a development with a fairly restrictive HOA. This means that I have to be fairly careful to use largely invisible or stealth antenna setups. Because of a lack of suitable trees on my property, this means that I’ve had fairly compromised setups: I’ve gotten the most use from a […]

In my previous post about the virtues of microcontrollers in homebrew radio, I had a comment from Lee, who mentioned that he operated a LowFer beacon on 187khz. I’ve been passively interested in LF operation under Part 15 rules for a long time, but haven’t really gotten involved with it much. Lee operates from La […]

As anyone who has followed my blog for any period of time knows, my interests straddle a lot of different disciplines and hobbies, and often find interesting bits of overlap where I find I can do cool stuff. Two of my favorite hobbies are tinkering with microcontrollers and with the low powered end of amateur […]

Or not. I find a lot of editorializing about amateur radio to be, well, curiously off the mark. For instance try checking out Dan, KB6NU’s well meaning article about why you should upgrade to a General. I mean, that’s what the title is: Why you should upgrade to a General. The reason I find this […]

Previously, I have read about a wireless Morse thermometer designed by Steve Weber, KD1JV. I played around with the basic idea in a YouTube video I made. It basically powers a little Colpitts oscillator from an IO pin on an Arduino. Weber’s circuit did much the same, just using a small 8 pin AVR and […]

I’ve been busy lately, and have done almost nothing radio related. But John was kind enough to point out to me that Bill, N2CQR of Soldersmoke fame had posted a mention of me, and I surfed over to his blog to have a peek. His post that apparently uses my code to send Morse which […]

Tap… tap… tap… Is this thing still on? Apologies to my loyal readers (reader?) for the lack of recent updates. A combination of work pressure, family visits, general lassitude and other distractions have caused the writing muse to flee, and every time I sit down to write something down, I have just felt physically tired […]

I lost 1.8 pounds this week. I went on 2 mile walk with Carmen. I soldered some clip leads onto pennies to make a touch sensor for the Arduino. I figured out how to run the card deck on the Computer History Museum’s 1401 restoration page that computes pi on the 1401 simulator. 000000003. * […]