PACC 2014: Preparations can not start early enough....

Wise men always say that you should not wait till the last moment to prepare for things....

Unfortunately i never ever prepare until the last moment... and i really mean the last possible moment...

Since yesterday i changed this....

Now what is the most important piece of equipment in your shack???...

your awesome tranciever ? your 2KW PA ???

WRONG !!!

it's your coffee machine !!! you can not make QSO's when you fall asleep!!!

So I bought myself a new espresso machine... to make sure i can keep awake during the upcomming PACC.

It's an Illy X7.....

This preparation is 3 months in advance.... should be ok to have time to learn how to make the best coffee with this machine. At least i'll stay awake during the PACC !

73's

Getting PACC chills allready...

Alex

PA1SBM

Electronics are getting smaller, so is my iron.....

As you might have figured out reading my blog... I am not afraid to open up stuff end put my soldering iron in it.Unfortunately times are changing and its not as easy.

PCB Evoluation....

Conventional PCB

SMD PCB

Now tools need to be adjusted for this evaluation.....
Last week i was at a HAM convention and i bought a small... very small new soldering iron.

No, It's not the yellow JBC (very nice iron as well) but the little black thingie next to it.

I Just hooked it up, and i'll try it sometime soon. The tip is really small... see for yourself....

It really is very small, even with the ruler next to it, you don't really see how small....






Well anyway, back to doing stuff....

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

Last man standing....

Ok , i have gone over this in my head for a long while.......
"Should i write about a TV show......"
And as i am writing this now, you can guess the answer was yes......
So why should i write about a TV show.... nothing HAM about that you might think....
Well you are wrong....

Anyone remember "Tool Time" ? the show Tim Allen made in his show "Home Improvement"?
Well i do , i liked the show a lot and i have probably seen every episode which was made....
And i probably seen them 2 or 3 times due to reruns.....
Was it a good show? well no.... it was not very technical , you did not learn stuff, but it was 30 minutes of easy watching... and you had a laughter or 2......
Well , if you liked this like me , you will like "Last man standing". It's almost the same format as Home Improvement.

So why should i write about this? Well.... not so much in the 1st series, but in series 2, we HAMS get a look in Mike Baxter's shack (played by Tim Allen) Mike has a REAL registered call sign... no shit..
His Call sign is KA0XTT. QRZ.com states that the suffix stands for eX Tim Taylor, which is the name of his character in Home Improvement. This is probably true, as a lot of the cast of Home Improvement has guests appearances on this show....

Now i am not going to spoil a lot , but if you look a bit on youtube... you will find a lot of stuff about the HAM influence in the series.... Sponsors of equipment are: Yeasu, Icom, Ameritron, Heil... an maybe some more i have not spotted yet... you will see several models, HF and VHF/UHF....
I personally have not seen a tv series with more HAM stuff in it... If you have, please let me know, it might be worth watching then :)

Youtube must see about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ggKcisR7CU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STdIG4M7QmA

Well... Just check this out... i hope you will enjoy it as much as i do....
And always good to see our hobby being promoted :)

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

HAM Radio !!! A real man's hobby....

Ok, let's not talk about technical stuff for a chance.....

In our hobby i often get the question if there are a lot of women involved in our hobby.....
And usually i answer "no not that much".....
Usually you don't realy think of ham radio being a women's/girl's hobby.....
I went to a technical school..... 500 guys, 3 girl's..... and the girl's were not like girly girl's... if you know what i mean.... Somehow i kinda had the same idea with our hobby.....
Off course i know there are exceptions to this... as in every case...

So this morning i was looking at some youtube movies of the PACC contest.... and i stumbled on a few movies about YL's who do HAM radio.....
And i have to say... i feel kinda proven wrong.... not only did the video's show a long list but the younger ladies did often look like they could be girly girls, but also the women... (and i know i'll get comments for this remark, but please notice that i am not trying to offend anyone, i just try to create an image) they did not look like the type of women you would stereo typically would expect in a lesbian bar.... (again , not trying to offend anyone here ;) )

So again , i feel proven wrong , and i am happy for it!
Which leads me to this question.... Obviously they are a lot of women in the HAM hobby , then why don't they come out more??.....

Here is one of the video's i stumbled upon....
Funny Fact, the girl you see on the youtube picture below is not a HAM but 1 of the cast of Tim Allen's "new" serie "Last man standing" , a serie supported with a lot of equipment by Yeasu, Icom, Heil and Acom.

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

No news ??.... No... no news.....

Hello all.....

Just wanted to post a little thing here explaining why there has been no news about the vfo/pa of my bitx, or any other news to be honest....

Well , there are 2 main reasons......

1.
We have had some horrible weather lately.... the temperature refused to drop below 24c at night , and during the day temperatures exceeded 30c easily.... and i am not kidding you... we had an official heatwave.....
And to make my life a complete living hell..... this upcoming week there will be an even hotter heatwave.....

Now I can hear you guys think , but its 45c here and its fine..... yeah it would be if the humidity is LOW.....
Well not here in Holland.... humidity is high.... so you start sweating from places you never imagined you could sweat out off....

The average temperature in my shack has been around 35c all week.... No, I am not entering that room!!! TOO <fill in favourite swear word here> HOT......

Maybe a field day soon when temperatures drop a little...

2.
Reason 2 entered our house last tuesday.....
And her name is Myra......

She has a lot of energy and runs around 24/7...... she's 9 1/2 weeks old....
Alya , our 3 yrs old cat had a lot of adjusting to do , but as I am writing this post, just 4 full days after we got the little one , she seems to be doing OK , and slowly starts to play... or set hierarchy between them.... sometimes hard to see with the older one as she has no idea that playing wit an animal 1/4 of her weight should be a little more careful sometimes.....


Well....
I hope the temperature drops below 30 soon in my shack so i can post techy stuff again :)

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

Again a new toy in the shack... A LCR meter

Saturday my new gadget arrived in the mail....

A LCR meter......

It is a Vichy DM4070.... i never.... and i realy mean NEVER ever heard of this brand.....
Well until Hans, PD0AC told me to get this one....
It costs close to nothing..... The cheapest on eBay.com is $24.90 !!!

And i do understand why now.. looks and feels very rugged... And for accuracy ... the tolerance of a capacitor itself outweighs the tolerance of the DM4070...

I did not use it yet to see how it all works but that will not take too long, i'm sure....


for the techies... some shameless copy from ebay....

Technical data:   

Basic function	Range	Basic accuracy
Capacitance	200pF/2nF/20nF/200nF/2uF/20uF/200uF/ 2000uF	±(2.5%+5) ±(5.0%+5)
Inductance	200uH 2mH/20mH/200mH/2H 20H	±(3.0%+5) ±(2.0%+5) ±(5.0%+5)
Resistance	20 Ω 200 Ω/2k Ω/20k Ω/200k Ω 20M Ω	±(1.0%+5) ±(0.8%+2) ±(2.0%+5)

Special function	DM4070
Low battery indication	Approx. less than 7.5V
capacitor discharge protect	v
Auto power off	It will power down about 20 minutes if no any measure.
Function protect	v
Anti-shock protect	v
Sampling rate	0~ 5s
Operation way	Manual range
Max. display	1999
LCD size	65x41mm
Battery	9V (6F22)
Power dissipation	Quiescent current approx. 6mA

General characteristic:

Weight	0.65 LB (including battery)
Meter size	7-1/4" x 3-5/8" x 1-3/8"

untill the next post.....

Alex

PA1SBM

BITX20 - 23. VFO working !!!!

Hello all,

Sorry for not posting a while, i wanted to do a lot , but first my gf came down with the flu and a huge cold.... and after that off-course i had to get it too , and i am still not 100% better....

A few days back i received this email which made me forget my flu/cold/headache and made me wanna jump into my shack and start to fiddle around with my bitx20 vfo again.....




I can only say one thing.... Danny , you are awesome......

As you can see , the vf0+bfo is now at a proper frequency!

I still have a tine problem to get the bandwidth (14.000 to 14.350) set correctly but i guess this is because of the coil i made (and me not having read the manual properly how to set it) . It is not the correct wire , much too thick. needed to adjust the number of winding's slightly too.

I'll do some shopping on eBay tonight to get the proper gauge... because off course ... i did not have any.... nothing near it either.... murphy's law i guess....


Again Danny, thanx for the sollution you totally made my week !!
Succes at last !!! on to the next Bitx20 battle!


73's
Alex

PA1SBM