During the bad weather today I filmed a bit with the Go Pro camera and quickly put together a little antenna tour of the station in its current state, and also a little about the plans for the summer. Check it out!
Monthly Archives: May 2014
A weekend of various tasks
Posted by sm2wmv
on May 23, 2014
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SM2XJP gave me a ride down from the work QTH last Friday since I had gotten my new Miller MIG welder that I just bought. It is nice to have a MIG welder since it saves a lot of time compared to welding with stick. This is also a 240A welder so I can weld pretty thick material with it.
I did some welding to test the new welder out and modified a couple of tables I had gotten previously from work. I got some help as well from SM2XJP with the paneling on the house which we removed and then it was the task of battling the horrible insulation material. I can only say my condolences to the people who had to work with this crap some 50 years ago. If you have not dealt with it, then its very hard to explain how horrible it is. Each of these pieces of insulation is cut on the bottom and top so you have fibers of glass pouring out of it and it does fly everywhere and lands all over you. But now finally the last piece of it is down from the house! Now we just need to get rid of it…which means transporting it to the local dump.
Tomorrow I am heading down to the radio QTH again and will spend over a week there, so I expect to get a lot done.
QBL progress
Posted by sm2wmv
on May 14, 2014
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This weekend I spent a few hours on Saturday getting some issues I’ve had with my Station interface project with the sound paths to the sound CODEC chips. Luckily I could solve the problems and could spend some time programming again, getting closer and closer of getting something which might be useful. However quite a lot of small mistakes made so I will need to do a hardware revision. Not only because of mistakes though but also because I’ve realized I want a few more functions.
Sunday I went to work to do some regular work (that I get paid for) but after that I didn’t really feel like going home so I stayed and thought I’d build a bit on a kit I bought some time back from http://www.communication-concepts.com/. I bought it to be used as a preamp, so we could be able to get decent output of the 4-1000A amp with 100W rigs (after BPFs etc less than 100W) but since we kind of scrapped the 4-1000A amp and is using the HV transformer in the QBL project instead I don’t really have much use for the amplifier, but why not build it anyway just for fun.
Today Tuesday I got bored sitting at home after work so I went back and continued work on the QBL tube socket and I also cut a hole for the socket in the center plate in the amp. I had some teflon lying around that I used to mill some isolator and I am quite happy with the result. Now I need to figure out a chimney. I also had a friend help me to design some gears for the stepper motor potentiometer (feedback) that I’ll get 3D printed. When I have those parts I can continue to design the holders for C1, C2 and the L with the stepper motors.
Basement work contd…
Posted by sm2wmv
on May 6, 2014
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Another long weekend at SJ2W. I went down on Wednesday with my girlfriend who unfortunately had to leave on Friday back up north again. However I spent most of my time down in the basement getting everything ready for the concrete pour. I am not a very patient guy who doesn’t like to ask too much for help, so I ended up mixing the concrete myself which was a bit hard work but after 3.5 hours of continues work all concrete was poured. The result is OK, not as good as I had hoped though since I didn’t get the floor very even but it’s not a problem.
I also bought a MIG/MAG welder today, an American quality brand Miller and it’s a 3-phase 240A so should be pretty useful.
