The Cranky Sysadmin

I finally cleaned up the source code from my rendition of the LC Meter. Here s the source. Here is a modified freq counter library which works with my Arduino Mega2560. The original frequency counter library is here. If you have a mega1280, the library may not work without similar modifications that I made for the 2560. The AVR_MEGA1280 is lumped in with the other arduino flavors in the original library. I don’t have a mega1280 to test with so I didn’t make changes to it.

I’ve been tinkering with my homebrew slinky antenna and my G5RV lite which I picked up and Ham Radio Outlet. I’ve decided to abandon the slinky dipole. It will easily tune to everything from 80 meters to 6 meters, but there is always a lot of noise compared to the G5RV. Due to the fact that there are no trees on our lot and the fact that I don’t want questions from the neighbors, the highest I’ll be able to get an antenna is about 25 feet, the height of the house.
What shall I do for an antenna?

In the continuing saga of my antenna tuner, I think I’ve come to a place where the tuner is close to as good as it gets with my limited knowledge.
Recent improvements on my antenna tuner

In my last post, I mentioned that I was having much better luck with a slinky dipole then a G5RV. It turns out that I was misinterpreting the data. I can match the slinky on 4 HF bands without external tuning, not all of them. I can match the G5RV on 2 bands without external tuning. This of course led me to trying to find an antenna tuner. It turns out that they are expensive if you want one with good range.
A homebrew antenna tuner

My wife had asked me not to buy a ham radio before Christmas. It turns out that it was worth the wait. She got me a Yaesu FT-450D. I am having a ton of fun with it.
Getting a transceiver on the air

I am experimenting with various oscillators and having a lot of fun. It’s the first time that I am having a lot of success putting together analog circuits that work. I am also having my brain-farts. I am working on a Vackar VFO. It turns out to be a stable VFO with a nice clean sine wave, but that has nothing to do with my brain-fart.
Use a load resistor

I spent the day putting together a less unattractive LC meter then the one I had on a breadboard. As I said in the last post, the design is from Kerry D Wong. As an exercise, I made an attempt at getting the parts strictly from the local radio shack.
The completed LC meter

I picked up a copy of the ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications. I bought and fixed a nice Fluke 1935A frequency counter, and I just built an LC meter from mostly parts at radio shack.
What’s an LC meter?

One of the things I want to do, now that I have an amateur radio license, is build a transceiver. I’m probably going to settle on the Bitx 20 since I can hold the whole design in my head. I’ve actually built the VFO on a breadboard as a learning exercise.
A new ham has lots of projects

I built my first functional Colpitts oscillator today. I tried a Hartley oscillator, but I think my cheap transistors couldn’t switch fast enough for the small value of inductance I was using. My oscillator was based on the neat animations found at falstad.com.
And a Movie too