Another new one for me. Hows the saying go, they always come in 3’s. Well this one must be the 3rd, though i hope to prove the saying wrong and work more 🙂
Morocco FT8
Month: March 2019
Incomplete: South Africa
So close, yet so far away. Band closed before I had the change to complete the qso. I have South Africa on 15m, but nothing else, would have been nice to get them on 20. There is always tomorrow 🙂
Mauritius FT8
2 new ones in one day.
Brunei FT8
Tri-Band Trapped Vertical
Got a new antenna up. Trapped vertical for 20, 15 and 10m. Seems to be getting out better than the station master did by some and some more.
Just a quick install of the radials for testing before the storm arrives.
Still needs some pruning on the radials to bring it into resonance. Particularly on 10m
Never been spotted in Peru before and EU this early is not something I could manage either. I think im putting out a lot more signal than before.
ePFX 300
All The Pretty Colours
From left to right we have strawberry wine, apple cider and mulberry wine. The foaming in the strawberry wine is because the ferment is rather vigorous because its just come out of the fermenting bucket and I have squeezed the last of the juice out of the strawberries and those simple fruit sugars ferment very quickly and easily. This lot will be drunk this Christmas along with the blackberry wine I posted about a few days ago.
The Building Blocks of Amateur Radio
Ultimately when you break things down a receiver is not all that complicated. Sure in its entirety it can range from ultra simple to overly complex, but fundamentally they all share the exact same building blocks, switches, attenuators, amplifiers, mixers, filters and oscillators.
Within each of these individual building blocks there are many different variations of circuit topology that can be used. For sometime I have been thinking of writing a series of posts looking at each of these fundamental building blocks in some detail and offer some typical circuit typologies that are often used in homebrew receivers.
The image above is a block diagram of the receiver that I have been building for what seems like forever. What I will probably do with each building block is take a look firstly at different typologies and then at the specific topology I used, why i used it and will more than likely add in LT Spice simulations as well just for good measure. Being able to test and compare different circuit typologies without murdering parts is certainly a good skill to have.
So I will approach things in this order, Filters, Mixers, Amplifiers, Oscillators and then a quick look at switches and attenuators.
QSL Cards
Some of the nicer looking QSL cards from Eqsl last month. I particularly like the one from Norway from LB1HI. The use of the PSK Reporter map is pretty neat I think
Blackberry Wine and Mulberries
Got around to bottling last years blackberry wine. From what i tasted, its going to be pretty nice.
And out of the deep freeze comes last years mulberries, which are going to be made into this years wine. After this one is done, i will make another batch of strawberry wine as I have 3Kg of them in the deep freeze still. And if thats not enough, I might make some blueberry wine as well as I have some of those in the freezer also LOL.
