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MFJ-969 Deluxe Vera Tuner II

This past weekend, while playing around with my antenna setup and my new FTDX10, I needed to do some SWR measurements. I have a few SWR meters laying around, but I also had this MFJ tuner sitting on the shelf doing nothing. It had a nice cross needle meter as well as an integrated coax switch which would be useful for switching between my antenna and a dummy load. I don’t necessarily need the tuner parts, but this unit is about the same size as the FTDX10 and they stack nicely atop one another, so I figured I’d use this.

AREDN - Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network

The other day on mastodon.radio, I saw a post about AREDN, or the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network. I had heard of it before, but never really looked into it, and to be honest, still haven’t really look into it too deeply, but it looked like something I’d be interested in. After a quick poke around on the AREDN website, I hopped on eBay and bought two hAP ac lites (the first device listed on the supported devices list).

80 Meter SSB - Part 3 - Transmit/Receive Switching & PA

I am currently in the process of building an 80 meter SSB rig modeled off of a series of ZL2CTM’s homebrew videos. I’ve added in some relays for transmit/receive switching and added a multi-stage power amplifier, the schematics of which are below. I mostly copied Charlie’s work, but I substituted a handful of components for things I had on hand. The schematics below show the values that I used, but Charlie’s version had better performance than mine, so I’d suggest watching his videos if you want to follow along.

Yaesu FTDX10

Over the weekend, I continued working on my homebrew 80 metter SSB rig, but I ran into a few issues. While working on the output amplifier, I ended up burning out multiple resistors, trimpots, diodes, and transistors. I was getting frustrated, but luckily, a package arrived that shifted my attention. My new FTDX10. I made a few contacts on FT8 and I was able to successfully decode Olivia on 20 meters, but thunderstorms started to roll in, so I jumped off before I could join in the conversation.

southern fried gaming expo / vintage computer festival southeast 2023

This past weekend, Atlanta hosted the return of the Southern Fried Gaming Expo and Vintage Computer Festival Southeast. We had fun there last year, so we loaded up the family and made the trip again. This year seemed a lot bigger than last year. I’m guessing last year was still coming off of COVID, so things were a little more calm. This year, there were tons of people and there was a lot more to do and see.

80 Meter SSB - Part 2 - Superhet Receiver

Some time ago, I purchased an RF board off of ebay for a few bucks so I could repurpose the crystal filters. I figured that I’d use them someday and I guess today is that day. Below is a picture of the board as I received it. There were three German KVG filters, an XF-9 S 42, and XF-9 S 43, and an XF-9 S 44. The S 42 filter is an AM/DSB filter, the S 43 is LSB, and the S 44 is USB.