Gang,
While at the NorCal meeting the first Sunday of this
month in Sunny California (well it started out foggy,
but we all know that it was going to burn off) several
things of note.
At the Livermore meet I picked up a lifetime supply of
SMT resistors of assorted values. You'd be surprised at
how little 5,000 of these critters weigh. Now going
to have to collect the caps and transistors next. :-)
It's a never ending battle to be the first kid on the
block to collect one of everything, but someone has to
try.
Ran over (well drove the rent-a-wreck) to the CA Burger
official NorCal meeting place to see everything that I
could. Just too much going on in one place.
Bill Jones had his beautiful 38 special in a handcrafted
case and his E-dial using the three 10 bar LED displays.
I managed to get a board and on the way out of CA on the
following Friday I stopped at my favorite emporium of
electronic critters and picked up the 3 ICs, 3 LEDs.
The resistors and other stuff I knew I already had at
the hacienda so skipped those. Did pick up two more
TenTec TP-41 cases for more projects later. Anchor
Electronics is the only place that I have seen TenTec
cases available off the shelf. I do wish TenTec would
get back into retail distributors again but I do
understand the economics of the extra overhead.
So last night while calling what seemed like a never
ending series of CQs on 40M I stuffed the board. In
every project there is some lesson to be learned. Bill
had some R/S bar displays and I had something completely
different it turns out. One manufacturer may put the
beveled edge on one end and another on the opposite side,
so guess what? Yep, three puppies in backwards, but no
problem. Solder sucker to the rescue and they were out
and back in the right direction. Fired up and aligned
beautifully. Bill, of course, does good work on his
PC boards.
Look for the article in the next upcoming issue of QRPp.
BTW, look at the last issue. Check your expiration date.
Is it about time to renew? Be sure to remember the price
increase so that you can get them first class mail and
include some extra for their costs on the next issues
that you may already be getting before the expiration date.
Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Debbie Blanke, KG6UI, had her Pixie with additions of
transmit offset and an outboard audio filter with variable
pitch. The latter she made up from a circuit from the
Solid State Design book, but everyone has neglected to
mention that she did make a significant mod that I'll let
her either mention here or write it up in QRPp. As she
had it configured you won't find it in the book. It worked
really well and I now have to sit down and build one up
to play with. It might be something to add to a lot of
rigs or do like Debbie did and build one in a separate
box powered off a 9V battery. Good work Debra. The
rig was hooked up to Vern's Version of the St Louis Vertical
SLV(3) but everytime I called CQ someone came over and
hauled me off to someplace else. Didn't work anyone but
did hear other QSOs in progress on 40M. See the NorCal web
page and the 'additional pictures' section for closeups
of the Pixie.
FYI
SIG
Chuck Adams K5FO adams@sgi.com DXCC=8
http://reality.sgi.com/employees/adams_dallas/
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