Hey all! Check out this video from the ARRL, showing a little in-house Common Mode Current Choke building competition they posted a couple months ago: They have people of various experience levels, from not-a-ham(-yet) to veteran Amateur Extra, build different designs of common mode current chokes. Then (starting at about 5:45 into the video) they hook up their chokes to… Read More »CMCC Test Rig, used in ARRL Labs?!
I just launched the Halibut Electronics Broadcast Interference (BCI) Filter for VHF/UHF. It’s designed to prevent strong AM broadcast signals from blowing out the front-end of wide band receivers that have little or no pre-selection, such as inexpensive SDRs. There are many BCI filters availble, but all the ones I could find were designed for HF, and performed very poorly… Read More »Power handling of BCI Filter for VHF/UHF
Check out this wonderful blog post by W0DHZ, Dale, showing how he built an HHI Contesting Console, HHI Radio Pro, and two HHI User Pros into a portable setup for use as a 2-person POTA rig. I mean, just look at this beautiful build! Dale’s blog post includes the STL files for the 3D printed case to hold the Radio… Read More »Contesting Console for 2 Person POTA
Insert obligatory “It’s been too long since I’ve posted!” apology, and “I’ll be sure to post more often” empty promise here. Now that that’s out of the way… If you just want to listen to the HHI recordings, skip to “Without further ado…” at the bottom of this post. What happened to SOAR? I just realized I haven’t posted here… Read More »OHIS/HHI Test Recordings
I’ve been an EE to one degree or another for 30-ish years now. And one thing I never understood was when a decibel was 10*log_10(x) and when it was 20*log_10(x). My EE books describe it as 20*, but common use has always been 10*. A brief refresher Skip this part if you already know how to use decibels. A decibel… Read More »TIL: Decibels, Power, and Root Power
I worked Patrick, WD9EWK on his SOAR, using my SOAR, through the ISS! It was a bit sketchy, lots of stations calling and not responding, but we both heard each other and got our grid squares! We’re calling it a QSO! This is the first SOAR to SOAR contact. Hopefully to be followed by many more to come. I also… Read More »First SOAR to SOAR QSO!
I realize this is probably not what you want to read from the person who designing hardware specifically for the purpose of operating satellites, but I just made my first two Satellite QSOs during the 23:40UTC ISS pass over the South West US today! My first ever satellite QSO, with WA6ARA DM15: You can hear me get a little flustered… Read More »My First Satellite QSO!
UPDATED 2024-06-18: I still love my NanoVNA V2 Plus 4. I use it for HF, VHF, and UHF. It has served me very well for work on EggNOGS (up to around 450MHz.) It is still what I recommend, for all the reasons below. However, the price has gone up to $299. I think it was $199 when I bought it.… Read More »Which NanoVNA Should I Get?
(I blame Alun for the cheesy Queso joke.) The first successful satellite QSOs made with SOAR prototype hardware happened this morning on the ~17:30 UTC pass of AO-91 over South Western US. Patrick Stoddard WD9EWK worked W7JSD in southern Arizona, N6UTC in Long Beach, California, and XE2BHL in Tijuana. I haven’t implemented pass audio recording in SOAR yet (it will… Read More »WE HAVE QUESO– err, i mean QSO!
I’ve had several questions about what additional hardware you’ll need to provide for SOAR. One of those “additional hardware you’ll need to provide” is a headset. Lots of people have very strong opinions on headsets, and that’s ok. There are a lot of good options available, and they all optimize for different variables. One headset may be better for your… Read More »SOAR Headset Connector