We completed some work at the hut today. Thanks to Dave CZ and Lewis VK2GZZ in the morning and Tim BT in the afternoon. Work Done: Dusted and sweptd. Restarted and checked the D-Star (Thanks for your help Horst) – Now on air. Replaced the power supply on the Quantar 70cm FM / P25 repeater – Now […]
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Category: Technical Stuff
HF Comms in the Australian Outback
Why authorities only worry about odd-order IMD?
Why is it that ACMA only worry about odd-order IMD when measuring? 3rd & 5th in particular? Why not the evens? Matt (25-Jan-2017): 2nd order IMD products (eg. f1+f2) will occur well away from your desired signal, and are easily knocked out by your bandpass filter. However, 3rd order IMD products (eg. 2*f1-f2) will fall very […]
January 2017 Lecture – ICOM 7300
Now I need to buy one! View the lecture on VK2MB-TV! The ICOM 7300 session/lecture was originally planned for the HF Month – March 2017 – however as the Wyong field day is at the end for February and many members wanted a reason to grab one at the field day, a lecture/review of the […]
Workbench Cam
The clubhouse is now equipped with a Workbench Cam! Remember these evenings where everyone crams around the table at the front of the hall to witness the opening an interesting box or the soldering iron trying to fix a broken device. And how about these lectures where the presented gear is on the table and […]
Terlin Antennas – getting SWR down
Dom (17-Jan-2017): Before heading off on a 2week trip to the (quite hot) Red Centre I was just doing a quick sweep of my HF antenna at lunchtime. Although I have a nice dip at 7060, it doesn’t go very low, about 1.65:1. This limits my BW on 40m a bit. Antenna Mounted on bullbar. Any […]
Phone chargers for the car!
Two recent camping road trips where we relied on the travel time to charge our 2 phones convinced me to build a linear 5v power supply. We use an AM Airband radio in the car that is very sensitive to RF from typical switch modes phone chargers. The IDLA charger we bought even overrides our car […]
MWRS WebSDR Build Completed
The MWRS WebSDR is now online! After a year-long effort by generous volunteers, all the bits are connected together, a linear power supply has been built and the loop antenna is professionally installed. A huge thanks to everyone who has helped with this project, it’s great to see it online. Matt VK2RQ, Phil VK2BDF and Horst VK2HL helped […]
Book of Resistance
I got tired of wasting so much time looking for the right resistor in my resistor box. I’ve got a good span of values, but not many of each. I decided to buy a photo album and have 1 page per value, took me 2 hrs to organise but will save me so much, more […]
DMM leads into the PSU
When working on projects I often need to plug my DMM leads into my bench power supply to test PSU voltage, current drain, probe voltage onto the circuit, etc. My PSUs have banana female plugs, I only use the spade side of the plugs, not the front holes. I tend to poke the test leads […]
Flower Pot Antenna on a wire
Here is a very handy aerial for permanent and field day installations. We’ve used VK2ZOI Half-Wave Flower Pot Antenna’s design, however we’ve only used the UPVC conduit for the choke section. This gives us a 2m aerial on a wire. It can be raised by pulling from the top, typically with a rope over a […]
Lego Iambic Key
Poor man’s morse key
Youtube video zoomed pictures, the shorter key is “iambic”. It apparently made it to the Australian favourite ham radio magazine.
Anderson on Jiffy boxes
Many projects require Anderson plugs to power circuits in jiffy boxes. Here is a way to do it. The Anderson plugs have a flat side and a side with the hooks sticking out. I faced the flat side onto the lid. This will require that you either remove the lip on the edge of the lid, […]
Quick & Cheap Iambic Key
Got keyer in your rig but don’t want to invest into an iambic key without really knowing if you will like it? Here is a very simple and cheap key to get your started. A stereo 1/4 inch plug, 2 short copper wires, et voilà. Can be used as right hand or left hand key, […]