Minor Party In Progress Here........

My wife has her two best friends over tonight for dinner, a movie, and a little wine.

One had a birthday last week, one has a birthday today, and she also became a grandmother last week.

I'd head out to the garage and smoke a cigar, but I'm not finished cleaning and organizing the garage, and I quit smoking!

So I'm hiding out in Radio Central getting our new NAS up on the network, and doing back-ups on all the household PC's.

I'll send up a red flare for help if things get too out of hand here......

Friday Already??

DUH..........

Been busy playing with the dogs, finishing up some extra patch cables for the JOTA event on the Iowa, and getting ready to test all my stuff over the weekend.

AND......I'm learning how to field strip, clean, and lubricate (GREASE! NO OIL!) my M1 Garand.

I was a bit intimidated by it at first, but with the half-dozen or so books and manuals I have, I finally took a deep breath, and started doing it, learning all the names of the parts, and how they fit together.

It kind of reminds me of when I first bought my Kimber 45ACP a few years ago. I hadn't taken a 1911 apart in so long that I was scared to do it (BOING! there goes the recoil spring...AGAIN!), but I had several 1911 books, took a deep breath, and started getting familiar with it again.

Now that I'm somewhat familiar with the internal parts, AND have some ammo for it, I'm going to plan a trip up to the rifle range with my son so we can see if I can shoot the thing.

Should be fun.....

Hope y'all have a great weekend!

Elecraft KAT100 Automatic Antenna Tuner Finished

Well, I didn't get to do much work on it this weekend.

Saturday morning my radio club had the "First Saturday of the Month" breakfast, and then I spent some time talking to other club members about various projects we're all working on.

Got back from "breakfast" about 1030, and had some "Honey Dews" in the job jar that had to be done.

Late Saturday afternoon we went out for an early dinner at a little Mexican restaurant, and then we went to a movie.

I wanted to go see "Rush", and she wanted to go see "Gravity".

Hmmmm....she lets me play radio, work on the garage to clean it up for another BIG upcoming project, never complains if I don't do the vacuuming on the appointed day or forget to empty/load the dishwasher, etc, etc, etc.

We went to see "Gravity".

DON'T waste your money on this movie!

It's so full of technical mistakes (the producer/director calls them "artistic liberties") that I found it rather uncomfortable to watch, being somewhat familiar with orbital mechanics and other "Rocket Science" stuff.

Plus, it has George Clooney (or is that George LOONEY?) in it, and I do not like paying to see this left-wing moonbat on screen!

But she enjoyed it, and she does so much for me that I really can't complain about going to certain movies with her.

Sunday started off fine, then her brother called to remind me I'd promised to fix his son's Onkyo home theater receiver that somehow managed to get a 1/4" headphone plug snapped off in the jack, disabling all the speakers, and most of the THX/Dolby/Surround Sound features.

Sigh......

That only took about 45 minutes to repair, but then we sat around yakking about all kinds of other stuff for another couple of hours, so most of Sunday was used up.

SO.....I was primed to finish this thing when I got home from work tonight, and finish it I did.

It was 95% or better completed, and all I had to do was find all my connectors and stuff to power it up, do some basic checks, and calibrate the VSWR bridge that's built into it.

And here she is, sitting underneath the Elecraft K2/100 radio I'll be using it with.

One thing I'd forgotten was that this particular Astron SS-30M power supply was really noisy on HF frequencies, as shown by the little green bargraph just to the left of the frequency display.

Normally, like when running on batteries or a "linear" power supply, AND with the antenna connected to a dummy load, the meter would indicate ZERO bars/segments being lit, and not an "S9 +20" noise level!

I've got another one of these supplies in my Field Day kit, so I'll drag it out tomorrow and see how it compares, but I do remember one of these supplies being NOISY.

If the other supply is quiet, I'll pop the covers off both of them and check that this one has all the same components in it, and I'll try to silence this one.

Otherwise I'll just use the other supply when I operate the JOTA station on the 19th, and try and figure out what to do with this one.

Elecraft KAT100 Automatic Antenna Tuner Update

Well, after spending some time winding the toroids (Somewhere here I have a "Tirade on Toroids" since it's not one of my favorite things to do), I installed all the relays (the black cubes) that select the components needed to match the antenna to 50 Ohms , and then mounted the toroids, and soldered them down.

All the resistance checks on the board passed with flying colors, and this board is now ready to move on to the "Final Assembly" stage, where the few remaining mechanical parts and connectors will be added.

I also finished the Front Panel board, which mainly has the indicator LED's, and some Octal Drivers for powering the LED's.

So, on to one of my favorite sections of the Assembly Manual, "Final Assembly"!

Now I get to mess around with mounting the SO-239 RF connectors, and assembling all the bits and pieces that make up the enclosure.

Hope you're all having a good weekend. We're under Santa Ana conditions here, with wind gusts in excess of 20MPH, even here in The LBC.

How To Tell If Your Dog Is Involved In A Sex Scandal

Woof-Woof!
(Dog-speak for "Enough Said!")

More on the Elecraft Project tomorrow.....
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Construction Of Elecraft KAT100 Automatic Antenna Tuner

Yesterday afternoon on my way home from work, I stopped at my mail service, and picked up my Elecraft KAT100 kit. I rushed home like a kid at Christmas, opened the box, did the parts inventory, cleaned the bench, set up my PanaVise, and clamped the main Printed Circuit Board into it.

If you're a homebrewer, or have worked in Electronics Assembly, you're no doubt familiar with the PanaVise line of products.

If you're not, you should be.

PanaVise makes many different products, but the ones I use the most are for holding printed circuit boards while you assemble and solder them.

The rig seen holding the board is the "Model 300 Standard Base", mounted to the "Model 312 Tray Base Mount", and holding the "Model 315 Circuit Board Holder".

I also have the "Model 303 Standard Head" , the "Model 376 Self-Centering, Extra Wide Opening Head", and a few other items they make, like the soft-jaws for the "Standard Head".

These tools are not cheap, but as I joked about the test gear I recently bought, their cost will be "amortized" out over the many, many, many times I use them. It's such a JOY to be able to make proper solder connections without having the board flop all over the bench, and to be able to flip/pivot the board from front-to-back to insert the components, that these things pay for themselves just in diminished aggravation the FIRST time you use them!

Plus they mounting base I have the vise base attached to has handy little compartments to put small parts in.

So, not that we have the board mounted, let's get started, shall we?

The first parts to be soldered into the board are the capacitors, so I sorted them out, and put them in the tray compartments.

Then I looked in the assembly manual, for what value capacitor corresponds to the component designator silk-screened on the board, and inserted the capacitor, bending the leads on the backside of the board to hold it in place before soldering it, "C47" in this case.

Some are checked off because I'd already started inserting them before I decided to take pictures to show my friends here how the kit goes together.

So I find the correct location on the board and insert the capacitor.

One thing important to do is to verify that you've inserted the correct part before soldering it down, a variation of the "Measure TWICE, Cut ONCE" rule.

Yes, these are fairly small parts, and I NEED my magnifying lamp to read the part value!

As you insert the parts, bend the leads out to hold them in place before you solder them.

 This is what they look like under magnification, before soldering.

The parts are then soldered in, using my Weller WESD Temperature Controlled Soldering Station.

Then the leads are clipped, and I move on to the next group of parts to be inserted and soldered.

This kit I'm assembling is made by Elecraft, who make high-quality, high-performance radio kits. The parts are all high-quality, and in particular their circuit boards are among the best I've ever seen.

Everything about the boards is flawless, from the plated-through holes, to the solder plating and solder mask and the silk-screen and the fact they're spotless when you get them just screams "QUALITY"!

I've seen "Commercial Quality" equipment that didn't have boards this nice. Whoever their board house is certainly has their act together.

I'll continue this tomorrow or the next night, but right now it's 2230 hours, and I have to hit the rack.

Good night, all!

Heathkit IG-18 Audio Generator Mods Finished

And it works!

Is the distortion lower than before? Does it better the Heathkit specs?

I don't know because I don't have a Distortion Analyzer of THD Meter, but it adjusted "per the instructions" and appears to work fine.

Here's the new Power Supply capacitors:

And the capacitors I replaced on the Wave Generator board:

And the Meter Buffer circuit board mounted to the meter studs:

One other thing I did was to replace the neon lamp "Power On" indicator with an LED. Neon lamps can oscillate and generate wideband noise under certain conditions, so out it went.

I used the existing wiring which I rerouted a bit, and the existing terminal strip. The strip had a 2700 Ohm, 1/2 Watt resistor mounted to it, which I replaced with 4 8200 Ohm 1/2 Watt resistors in parallel. I needed this value to drop the +40 VDC power supply voltage to a lower value for the LED, which should have 1.5 Volts across it, and draw 20mA, according to the specs for the LED I'm using. This would have required a 1 watt resistor as I'm dropping quite a bit of voltage, and I didn't have any 1 Watt resistors in the value I needed. So, parallel 4 half-Watt ones, and you get TWO Watts, which gives me some headroom on the power dissipation.

I wasn't about to add a regulator to power a single LED, so I'll just accept the "wasted" power in the resistors.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to put the FT-726 radio alignment on the back burner for a week or so (again! Will I ever finish this thing?), as I have an Elecraft KAT100 Automatic Antenna Tuner kit arriving tomorrow.

I'll be operating NI6BB on the Iowa for the BSA JOTA event in late October, and the member who normally supplies the radio and tuner we use will not be available, so I'll take my Elecraft K2/100 down to the Iowa to use. This radio is my portable/emergency HF radio, and since I normally use it with my Buddipole and manually adjust the antenna using an antenna analyzer, I didn't really need a separate tuner.

The "Discage" antenna we primarily use on the Iowa is broadband, BUT it doesn't have a "1:1 VSWR" in the Amateur Radio bands (it's more like 3:1) resulting in most radios cutting back their power output. The tuner (really an impedance matching device) will allow the radio to operate into a 50 Ohm load, and deliver full power without subjecting it to the voltage stress a high VSWR would cause.

And I'd like to get the tuner kit built at a leisurely pace, rather than spending several nights burning the midnight oil, getting overly tired and making mistakes, and test it before I need it.

Hope y'all had a good weekend!

Why Do My Projects Always Expand?

Whoo boy....I'll bet all of my friends out here know what I'm talking about!

About 8 months ago my radio club had a members-only auction to get rid of equipment we no longer use in the club station. I came home with an ICom R-71A shortwave receiver, and a Yaesu FT-726 VHF/UHF multimode transceiver.

The ICom works OK, so it went on the shelf, but the reason I got the Yaesu for $25 is that it allegedly had a problem with the UHF module, it's not suited very well for repeater (FM) use because it doesn't have a CTCSS "Tone Board", it has no "Comm Port" on it so you can't run it with a PC and it wasn't usable for satellite use, as it lacked the satellite module.

It's basically an FM/SSB, 10-Watt output radio that covers 2 Meters (144~148 MHz) and UHF (430~440MHz), and while it would be a very good radio for "rover" or home use with some external amplifiers, NOBODY wanted it, so I won it with the opening bid of $25.

I got it home, and it sat for awhile whilst I went through my "Medical Adventures". I finally started working on it a month or so ago.

I pulled the covers and knobs off to scrub them, and lo and behold, what's this?

It has the satellite module installed!

Some basic testing shows that it puts out 10 Watts on both bands, and the satellite unit works as per the manual, BUT, it's 8 kHz off in frequency on transmit on both bands.

What makes this radio unique, along with it's newer big brother the FT-736, is that the radio itself, without any of the modules, is a "10 MHz, I.F.", and the individual modules act as "transverters" to upconvert the 10 MHz to whatever, and then downconvert the whatever back to 10MHz.

So, since the frequency is off the same amount on two different bands, it points to a problem in the basic radio chassis, exclusive of the band modules.

ANYWAY.....I figured I should do a full alignment on it to ensure it works properly before I sell it, and that's when the fun started......

I got started doing the alignment, and then got to the step where I needed my RF Probe. Hmmm...where'd I put it? Can't find it, order a new one. While waiting for the new one to arrive, I use my frequency counter and DMM to adjust the things that I can, which goes fine.

New RF probe arrives, and I finish up the initial alignment steps. The SSB and CW portions of the basic radio are now operating per spec. Time to do the FM section....UH-OH....I need a Deviation Meter to adjust the FM deviation. Huh...never have owned one of those. Probably time to buy one, as I'm sure I'll need it after I retire and really start doing radio stuff!

OUCH.....SIX HUNDRED BUCKS?!  Oh, well....off to eBay where I find an old Lampkin Engineering one made in the 1950's for $30, FREE shipping!

It arrives in great shape for being as old as I am, and works *perfectly*. Super...time to set the FM deviation!

Uh-oh.....I need a calibrated source of 300Hz and 2800Hz. I have a two-tone generator for aligning HF SSB radios, but it operates at two different, fixed frequencies, and my service manual is very specific on why you must use 300 and 2800Hz.

Hmm....well, I have that ancient HP signal generator I'm slowly rebuilding as a memorial to my friend, but I'm waiting on some esoteric parts for it. I also have a newer HP solid-state signal generator, BUT that dirty old thing was the piece of equipment I was working on the night before I got the MRSA infection in my finger. Think before I handle that one again I'll put some gloves on, and scrub it down with bleach, and then hydrogen peroxide!

Off to eBay again, where I score a MINT Heathkit IG-18 audio generator for $70, FREE shipping!

While waiting for the generator to get here I start searching for a manual for it. Since my Google-Fu is strong, I find that with a few simple modifications, you decrease the Total Harmonic Distortion by a factor of TEN or more, and also make the frequency accuracy better by the same amount!

Wow....! These things are already pretty good, and for about $30 in parts I can make them an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE better?!?

GO FOR IT!

The generator gets here on time, and all the parts I either have, or picked up on the way home from work on Friday. I take the covers and knobs off the generator (why do I feel Deja Vu coming on?), scrub them and dry them, and start testing the generator to make sure it works before I modify it.

Note to others:  ALWAYS test the equipment before you modify it to make sure it works, or you can wind up chasing you tail thinking you screwed up the mods!

The generator tests out fine after I clean the switches and controls with some DeoxIT (amazing stuff!) to clear up some erratic operation.

Then BANG!!

My six-month old LED magnifying lamp goes casters up with a bang and cloud of smoke. I really liked this thing as the color temp of the LED's made it really nice to work with, the big 5" 3-diopter GLASS lens was clear with no distortion, it was light weight and easy to move around on the extension arm, and it didn't throw off enough heat to warm the shack in the winter time.

And I'm getting old enough to really need a nice illuminated magnifying lamp for close-in work.

Oh, well......hop in the car and drive to the closest office supply store, which happens to be an Office Max that I go to regularly. I shop what they have, and pick one with a circular fluorescent tube in it, mostly because the only LED lamps they have are either too small, or have crummy PLASTIC "lenses" in them for "magnifying" what your working on.

It's not as bright as the LED lamp, and even though it shouts that it's "FULL SPECTRUM!!" on the box, I still prefer the color temp of the LED light. I took the cover off the LED light, and sure enough, the 59-cent switching "power supply" they used has vaporized. I'm going to count the number of LED's in it, see how they're connected, and come up with some kind of external supply to run it with, I like it that much.

Get home, unpack the new lamp, set it up, and start using it to inspect the soldering job on the generator. It is, after all, a HeathKIT, and some builders were less competent than others.

Touch up about 1/3 of the solder connections, set my Tektronix 2465B on the bench for the first time (don't worry, it works fine!) so I can adjust the generator, and HEY....it's 11 PM already?

Sigh........

So, here I sit waiting for the soldering iron to warm up, small pile of parts at the ready, fingers crossed, and wood knocked, and hopefully I can have the generator modified and operating tonight.

Alan Parsons Project -Eye In The Sky-

Stumbling around here at home today with a cold, and happened to stumble across this.

Enjoy!

Voter ID

From a friend of mine.

Of course, if you bring this up to a libtard, you'll either get a deer-in-the-headlights blank stare, or "OH....THAT'S DIFFERENT!", which I actually had one of them say to me once when I had them nailed down, and *this close* to admitting they were WRONG!

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First Steps Class Post Class Report

We had a great time!

Several of the people had previous firearms experience, with rifles and shotguns, but had never fired a handgun before.

Several had some very limited handgun experience, and were there to learn more, and improve their understnding.

One family was there, and they brought their 14 year old son because "It was time for him to learn about gun safety".

And we advised by the lead instructor before the students arrived that one person was an anti!

The class ran as it usually does, with intelligent questions being asked, and all of the students understood eye dominance, and all quickly learned the correct stances and grips, and above all, The Four Rules.

Everybody understood sight picture, trigger control, safe gun handling, and all the other things that get taught in the NRA "First Steps" class.

Then it was time to go out to the range, and put the pedal to the metal.

The range time consists of 20 shots at 7 yards, at an 8" x 10" piece of blank paper so the students can get used to handling, loading, and firing the pistols. This gives us a chance to check and correct any improper things they might be doing.

Next is 20 rounds on a "standard" slow fire/rapid fire target, again at 7 yards, and this gives us a chance to help them improve or correct things like an improper sight picture, jerking or slapping the trigger, and to keep checking their stance again.

One thing I've noticed is that while they may do as instructed in the classroom with a rubber gun, for some reason they change when they get out on the range. The most common fault I've seen is that people start to lean back, almost as if they want to hold the gun further away.

This does bad things to your balance, sight picture, and trigger control, so we do our best to correct them on their first shots at the blank paper.

It's up to the student to decide if they like the Isosceles or Weaver stance, and whether they want to keep their elbow "locked" or slightly bent. We also stress keeping the knees slightly bent, as if they go further in their training (most do), it's important to keep a bit "loose" so you can learn shooting on the move, a vital skill in self-defense.

The last target is 10 rounds on the same size target, and we score them on this one.

The big surprise of the class was the young lady (the "anti") we were advised about.

She was pretty quiet during class, asking few questions, but really came to life on the range. As luck would have it, she was in "my" group (We had 10 students an 4 instructors) on the range, and turned out to be an excellent student. She listened carefully, took direction very well, and had a good attitude.

At one point she turned slightly (and safely, keeping the pistol pointed downrange) to me and said "This is FUN! I don't see what the big deal is about guns!".

So I don't know if we "turned" an anti-gun person, or just helped her to subtly make up her own mind.

The two guys who had rifle experience wound up going into a 3 round "shoot off" to determine the overall "winner", and over half the class scored in the 90's on their last target.

So we had another safe class, and brought 9 adults and one 14 year old boy through it with flying colors.

After class one of the other instructors and I spent some time getting our own bad habits worked out, and I put about 100 rounds of 45 ACP downrange.

Always good to go to the range!