RE: Moving

Since i moved the shack up into my spare room i have been having a clear our and sold quite a few of my radios.... only to buy more radio. my shack now consists of a Icom IC-9100 for 2m 70cms and a IC-7600 for HF and 6m, i have also decided to move my test gear into the shack as it was too cold to leave it in my out house workshop.

Light At The End Of The LEDS

Well as i posted earlier about my noise problem i have been in contact with greenworldsolutionsledlighting from ebay, Ken has been very helpful and has worked with me on this noise issue.

Ken sent 2 different psu's (one for a 6W and the other for a 9W) led downlighter and on test the difference in noise is brilliant 

Here is the new led driver

Baseline test no led lighting

 New led driver

 

And finally the noisy original

 

 

My conclusion is that if we don't fight to keep our spectrum clean we will all be lost in the the noise..... Happy DXing and a Happy new year to all....G0SCI

Noise Noise Noise

Well after a week of total desperation i had to confront my neighbour about a very strong ( s9+) noise that had materialised....

What i found was he had fitted some ebay LED lamps in his bathroom which i had a look at and made a video of the noise that can be found here      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orm_pqqS35c   or direct below

I decided to open the psu up to see if it had any filtering and here is a pic of the noisy little beast

From there i decided to get the Rigol spectrum analyser out and do some noise tests so here goes with the baseline test

Then i done a sweep at 100Mhz with a 200Mhz span

At closer inspection you see the noise is very bad and it has a 25 - 30 Meter radius

Its not all bad! the neighbour is sympathetic to the problem and wants a resolution as much as me so we spoke the the ebay seller who sent out 2 units ( 1 x 6W and 1x 9W). The 6W is fairly quiet and we managed to use the 6W psu to run the 9W led and it let to me track the noise down  to the led psu driver.

I have to add the 6W to show you how different both units are.

 Same packaging just different pcb

As you can see its a lot quieter and has 1 - 2 Meter Noise radius

 I will let you know the outcome as the ebay seller helps us with the noise issue....73's for now G0SCI

RNLI DONATION FROM WEARS CLUB

I am proud to announce that WEARS along with Houghton ARC and Durham DADARS have passed the cheque for the sum of £253.00 to the RNLI.

MOVING!

Not too far though... The new shack is in progress and I have moved it upstairs into my box room.I have a lot more to do but it the shack is coming along nicely. The shack now has a 42" 4K lcd tv, ICOM IC-9100, and I now have a Audio Technica studio mic with Beringer 802 mixing deck.

ITS IAMBIC TIME

Well it was after 12 at night and i was into the small hours of the morning, I wasn't tired and i had the idea to knock up a iambic keyer for my new ebay purchase

I managed to find a arduino nano, a mini piezo speaker, some wire and a couple of 4.7K resistors

More Long distance results from WSPR

Not really much to say except the 100mW travels well

And further again!

The conclusion i have decided on is that the Ultimate 3 WSPR was fun to make and does well!
A big thank you to Hans Summers at http://www.hanssummers.com/ and you can find his Ultimate 3 for sale at http://www.qrp-labs.com/

THE ULTIMATE 3 WSPR PART4 (THE RESULTS)

Here is a few WSPR map results

All in All A Surprising result with contacts from all over the globe using a trap dipole and the U3 txing 50 - 200 Mw ...Barry G0SCI

THE ULTIMATE 3 WSPR PART 3 ( THE CURVES)

Here is the results of the tests i done with the filters with my Rigol DSA815TG

160 Meters

80 Meters

40 Meters

30 Meters

20 Meters

10 Meters

How i tested the low pass filters

THE ULTIMATE 3 WSPR PART 2 (TESTING)

The completed U3 with room for more addons if needed

Another view from the rear with antenna, power (5 volts) and gps sockets

The GPS new and old (the old V,KEL in the box with 3.3v regulator board)  SKM61 has just been delivered and is pictured to the right of the box

I would advise to use quick drying transformer varnish

THE ULTIMATE 3 WSPR PART1 (BUILDING)

 Well the Hans Summers U3 Kit arrived and as you can see i had my work cut out....

 

As you can see the PCB's are really well made and a pleasure to solder

 I mocked up a couple of test low pass filters to test the U3 with temp hot melt

 Once the U3 was built i powered up and it worked first time

 

Filters in order from left to right 160, 80,40,30,20 and 10 meters with a fresh coat of transformer varnish which seals them from the elements and holds them in place... no nasty hotglue

 The GPS i purchased from ebay  and the lovely new case came so we are on the home straight !

WELCOME TO THE CLAN...M6YBV

Just a quick update to let you all know my lovely wife Beverley has passed her foundation and now has the callsign M6YBV.

     she is also on eQSL.cc

PURCHASED A ICOM IC-9100 AND MADE MY DV-MEGA

The DV-Mega landed in the post and i made it in about 30mins, After a little bit setting up we had it running on my dstar handset, more info speak to Karl from www.dvmega.co.uk 

    Works well on the IC-9100

Extra Modifications to the filter system for GB3TS

Extra Modifications to the filter system for GB3TS

We got a lot of work done on site last week.
Cabinet installed by Ian G7MFN with all the trimmings ( PDU power distribution unit and shelf) and after a spruce up we done a few tests which revealed that the cavity filters even though they were perfectly tuned were showing a high SWR.
The antenna has a perfect SWR of 1:0 (one to none as they say but as noted i should realy say 1:1 ) so we will be going back up next week after the new N connectors arrive and I have soldered them into the the RX filters. This time we will try to notch at the RX side so there won't be a swr problem.