Latest posts

Checklist done. Here we go.

It has been a long wait, but the time has finally come. I’m hours away from starting the journey towards Cape Town to meet up with the rest of the team, and begin the adventure 3YØK DXpedition to Bouvet Island. Clothes are vacuum sealed and ready. Bags are ready, and all items accounted for. Home…

PA redesigned, tested

I had to work my way around a couple of unexpected obstacles. The transistor I used as a “pre-amp” did not perform well enough to work on 17m. The rise and fall time was way too slow, barely being able to perform at 630m / 475kHz. Indeed, that was my target frequency, but being expert…

PA considerations, redesign

Results from testing the power amplifier were both uplifting and disappointing. Let’s get straight to it. Let’s take the bad news first. The current design use a small NPN transistor to amplify the Si5351’s output signal from a unloaded 3.3V to 13.8V DC to allow the FQP13N10 mosfet to switch as intended. For frequencies higher…

PA built and ready

…to be tested! Hah! You just got click-baited! But keep reading, though. It might get better down the line. Let’s have a look at the current state of things. Right off the bat, and to be frank, no real schematics exist yet. Apart from a few sketches in my notebook, it’s more or less built…

630m, quick update – first test!

Quick update on the 630m project. I haven’t had the chance to finish the power amplifier for the 630m project yet, but I stumbled across an old Aliexpress 2W broadband amplifier I bought many years ago. I hooked it up, just for fun, just to see what happened. And wow, it works! Now, I have…

630m project, update

The 630m transmitter part of the project is showing signs of life! Well, allow me to self moderate so we don’t get all carried away. The output power is only 3 milliwatts (!) and have mainly been tested on a dummy load. I don’t want to start thinking about the antenna yet, since I fear…

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