I’m super excited to add the miniVNA to my toolbox.
6m opening from the Cabin
The night before we had to leave the cabin there was a nice 6m opening to DM04, DM13, and DM14. I configured my Buddipole with a two element yagi and ran about 50 watts from the Elecraft K3. Received signal reports from 54 to 59 from those grids. Worked about a dozen stations and even received a nice QSL card from K6JAD.
20m RF Amp, Ugly Style
Today’s Saturday project was to solder up ugly style a 20m RF amplifier that resided on my bench for like six months. It’s been nearly a decade since I did anything ugly or Manhattan style. This project was actually an excuse to design a RF low pass filter and test it with my Rigol spectrum analyzer. The screen shots below show that the first harmonic is suppressed by 26db. Mysteriously, there is a harmonic below the primary frequency. I used a 2N3866 power transistor. This are getting hard to find, but I’ve managed to get a supply from Aliexpress.
Edit 2014-12-25:
I used the low pass filter to test the miniVNA Pro. Here is what the loss response looks like:
Yet another failed winter SOTA attempt at W7O/WV-005 Coffin Mountain
This is my third attempt at activating Coffin Mountain. The second time during the winter. This year we did not even make it as far as the trip in 2012. We geared up big time for this trip. Bruce, my trip partner, and I both built pulks to carry all the extra gear needed during winter. I purchased a nice 10 amp/hour LiFEPo4 battery.
We knew by late Friday afternoon that it was not looking good. A winter storm had moved into the area. We erroneously assumed this would us help us snowshoe the route. All told, it can be up to 8.5 miles of travel from OR22. The snow was falling pretty heavily by early Friday afternoon. It was rather dry snow and we figured that the previous two days had brought about 24 inches of new snow. Our snowshoes were sinking 12 to 16 inches in the snow. This limited us to about a maximum speed of half a mile an hour. We snowshoed about two miles on Friday. Friday night brought at least 24 inches of new snow. A local resident measured it at 27 inches.
We did not make it Coffin Mountain, or it’s close sibling: Buck Mountain.
Baofeng UV-5R
I have several of the Baofeng UV-5R. Recently found out that is an upgraded model: BF-F8+. The Amazon reviews on it are not that good.
Hendricks dummy load
Recently purchased a Hendricks 10 watt dummy load. This kit comes with through hole or surface mount parts. You choose which ones to install.
It’s a nice one hour project. I enjoyed practicing my soldering skills on the surface mount components.
Flying PigRig #316
Finished up the transceiver and ran it through the alignment process. My frequency counter nor my signal generator are accurate to enough decimal places. I ended up aligning it by ear. The oscillator output is a nice clean sign wave. The output looks excellent after a quick look at the output on spectrum analyzer.
Mounted in a case. The included copper heat sink appears to be quite adequate. Still having thoughts about what type of power cable to use. My preference is Anderson PowerPole, but there are not a lot of chassis mounting options. I’m considering ordering some Anderson AutoGrip blocks from Hardened Power Systems.
Flying PigRig 4
Continued installing parts. I’m finding the solder pads that are electrically connected to the ground plane to be hard to solder. The holes are only tinned in a few places. This makes it hard to put the correct amount of solder on it.
Ordered a Hammond 1591GSGY
Flying PigRig 3
Spent more time this Saturday assembling the pigrig. Component soldering is easy, it’s the transformers that get me. I like and am good at winding toroids, but the bn transformers are a different breed of difficult.
Flying PigRig 2
The resistors are in. I’ve taken to enjoying the surface mount assembly. He surface amount work was easier than identifying the color bands on 1/8 watt resistors. I must be getting old.
