Dutch PACC contest

I was wondering if i should put it up on my blog as i am not fond of contests at all.
Many amateurs become very ignorant, rude, and non ham like when they start to contest.
There for I never enter any contests. except for one.  (no offense intended to proper ham's who follow normal etticets)

The Dutch PACC contest is the only one i want to enter. the contest is to work as many dutch stations as possible. So that means that for dutch amateurs, there will be a good chance that they will make a lot of QSO's with stations they would otherwise not be able to work due to pile up.

Why is this you might ask?.... Well... Holland (or better and correct: The Netherlands) is a bit densely populated. therefor we have not that much room for huge antenna towers as some other countries.
Also the legal limit of 400wats pep is lower then a lot of other countries. So a lot of dutch ham's stick to the 100 or 200 watts that come out of their rigs.

So when a dutch station is calling out for a distant station, it becomes hard to get through the pileups when you have to compete with a lot of "big gun" stations.

Off course there are exceptions. In the Netherlands we have a lot of these "big gun" stations as well.
But we have a lot of simple stations as well. with onluy 1 vertical or a few wire antenna's. (like myself)

Anyway, last year i wanted to enter as well, but some thing came up and i could not join the fun.
This year i took the friday and Monday around the PACC weekend off as well, so i can properly try my best to make some nice QSO's.

Contest time/date: 12:00 UTC 09 Feb 2013 - 12:00 UTC 10 Feb 2013
Contest info: http://pacc.veron.nl/      


I'll see if i can post on my twitter account (@PA1SBM)  and here on what frequency i am operating.
But please bare with me if i get a pile up.... i am not a contest operator :) 

BITX20 - 20. VFO still not at the right frequency ....

This week, while i had the week off,  i have been busy mostly with rebuilding the attic. i bought my house 3 years ago, and the attic was one big room. It's now divided into a separate storage and a guest bedroom. but this is more for a different blog, back to tech stuff :)

I also had some time for fiddling around with the VFO again and i do not get the bloody thing on the frequency it should be at which is about 14.175 - 9.9953 = approx 4.180 MHz. My VFO is running at twice the frequency.

So somewhere there must be a weird thing i did wrong. I am very sure about that, but WHAT!?!?!?!
I started to check the components if i did not stick a wrong capacitor or resistor somewhere, but no luck so far. I also started to fiddle around with the windings on the coil, but the difference i get is too little for making up for the double frequency.

At this point i am staring blindly at this, so i have decided to give it a rest for a bit and start to build the amplifier section first. This again needs lots of coil winding, and oh my i love that so much.... not.... :)

So keep watching the blog. as that  section will be done be for the end of the upcoming week.... i hope :)

73's
Alex, PA1SBM

Happy holidays !!!

Hello all !!!

Even at christmas i have no time for myself.... (not complaining though... this is an awesome time)
We travelled down to my parents and we are spending the holidays at their place.
So inbetween the starter and the main course i am blogging to all you out there.

We ( Alex, PA1SBM, en GF) wish all people reading my blog the best Xmas ever, and for the new year all the best DX and lots of succesfull homebrew projects!!

Merry christmas and a happy new year !!!

p.s. i hope to get some time soon for the Bitx20 so keep an eye on my blog or twitter !!

73's 

Alex

PA1SBM

4 meters / 70 MHz 1/2 wave antenna.

For a long while i own a Ascom SE550... And i installed it in my shack, and it has been happilly hanging under a shelf next to my Kenwood TM-733e....

Well it was not that happy i think.. reason be the lack of an antenna....

I did not want to just walk in the store and buy one because i like to build antenna's to see if i can make something as good as a "professional" supplier. So i started to search for a design on internet and found....
http://www.70mhz.org/halfwav.htm   by by Ross Wilkinson G6GVI .

So i started to build one , but i could not seem to get it just right.... I could not get it to a SWR under 1:2.
Nothing els left to do then walk over to my neighbour (also a ham amateur) and tell him he would be without his mfj antenna analyser for the next few days.
Now this is never a problem, so i hooked up the MFJ and started to find a sweet spot for the coil, and experimented with different trimmers. Until i hit something which was good enough for me...

After getting to this... and yes i know it is not 1:1 and it is not 50 Ohm... but sufficient for what i want to do with it.
The guts of it look like this......

 

 

 

The door it is in front of is the entrance to my shack :)
Ok, this smal project is done, now back to focussing on my Bitx20!!

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

Busy,busy, busy,busy, aaarrrrgggghhhhh

Hello all....

I think the title of this post says it all.......

Lately my work has grasped all of my free time. doing 6 days a week , 10+ hours a day..... 3 to 4 hours commute.... Well you can imagine that this sucks all the energy you have out of you... if you can't... let me assure you , it does.

As some of you all have already gotten in touch with me if i plan to finish the Bitx soon... Let me assure you i have no intention to finish it tomorrow, but i do intend to continue in a steady pace...
It is allready annoying me i did not spend any time at it for the last 2 months.

In the mean time i did finish an antenna (quick project) which i will write about soon.

Keep posted... more new posts are on the way!

73's

Alex
PA1SBM

BITX20 - 19. VFO..stupid stupid stupid....

Just a little quick post which will show again why you need a proper guide/manual to build stuff if you don't know what you are doing too well.....

Today i came home early and while driving home i was talking on the repeater of Zaandam, where all of a sudden PA1ED came on... as you might remember he is the one who got me started with the Bitx20 and is also the one i talk to if i need a proper translation from what Sunil writes in his guide, to something what I as a dutchie understand. The conversation started like this.....

Me: Hey Ed, guess what, my IK3OIL FLL VFO runs at 14 MHz !! Woohoo!!
PA1ED: Ohh then i think it's broke... what did you do with it?
Me: Huh? What are you talking about??...
PA1ED: Well , unless you wanna end up at 24MHz, the VFO should not run at 14, but at 4 MHz....

Then as he said this , it hit me....the BFO runs just under 10 MHz... and you need to add that to the frequency of the VFO what will end up to be the frequency you use....
This was what Ed explained quickly as well as i was nearly at home..... So back to the drawing board ....

I will get there though.... just happy to have people correct me right in time before i really blow up things!
So again a big thanks to Ed! :)

73's

Alex

A new toy in the shack! A PM3055 scope

I have been wanting a scope for a while now, but i did not want to buy a new one or a expensive 2nd hand....
So i have been keeping eye on thge dutch eBay called "marktplaats" where all of a sudden i noticed an advert for an Philips (Fluke) PM3055....which was an expensive one back in the days :)

Now the 3055 came in 2 editions.... the 50MHz, and a 60Mhz.... As this one was a 50 MHZ i was a bit reluctant to buy this one. But the seller stated that the scope was good (yeah they all say this) but that it included original 2 probes and that both the user manual AND the service manual were included.

After some research i quickly found that these scopes have problems with their power supplies... but also the fix... Just replace all axial capacitors and ur good to go....

So after 1.5 hours driving there, and 1.5 hours driving back..... this is the new edition to the shack !

Next will be an LCR or an ESR meter ... not sure yet..... sugestions are welcome!

73's

Alex
PA1SBM