Category Archives: Electronics - Page 19

PowerMeter electronics

Posted by sm2wmv on January 24, 2013 Comments Off

I milled some circuit boards at work and smuggled in a few of my own designs as well. A few boards which are ULN2003A driver cards, a couple of ethernet module boards for the openASC box. I also designed a few peak-hold circuits which I plan to test with the PowerMeters. I have a problem that the new 16-bit A/D converter is too slow so the time between the FWD and REF sample is too long and the SWR calculation does not get accurate. And since the sampling time is too slow I can not do any proper filter either except a very slow one. So I am going to try using an LF398 chip so that I can hold both channels for enough time, that I can get a couple of samples and do the calculations. I guess we will see tomorrow if it works or not 🙂

[Show as slideshow]

Shack makeover cont…

Posted by sm2wmv on January 1, 2013 1 comment

Not much more work was done in the shack except some finishing touches on the remote. I fixed so that the RX switch for the TS480 works and should make it impossible to transmit on the RX antennas and it seem to work well. The plan was also to get the 60m tower rotatable but weather did not allow it with rain mixed with snow during a couple of days.

Lots of work to be done and I will try hard not to go too fast and make a mess of all wires again.

[Show as slideshow]

Shack makeover

Posted by sm2wmv on December 29, 2012 Comments Off

The radio shack has gotten so messy lately, that it felt like it was time to redo everything properly. Now when all equipment pretty much is the same regardless of contest it is easier to put cables etc more permanent. Priority #1 will be getting the remote up and running and the rest will have to take as long as it takes before everything is working to 100%. Position #1 and #2 (SO2R position) will be done when I have the support op fixed which will be a high priority now so its done before WPX SSB.

SM2XJP helped me all day so it went pretty well and part of the stuff is now done but still lots more to be done.

I also went out to remove some snow which had stuck to some guy wires.

[Show as slideshow]

Some winter pictures

Posted by sm2wmv on December 23, 2012 2 comments

I have been playing around getting rotators to be controlled by the openASC system. Right now I have installed it on two antennas (5el 15m, 5el 20m) and hopefully before the Christmas break is over I will have it installed also on the 60m tower and the 10m stack. I rotate it either with the openASC box or with the openASC Controller software which communicates with the box over ethernet and can be used remotely. By just selecting which antenna I wish to rotate and clicking in the map the rotation of the antenna(s) start.

openASC Controller run in Windows 7