Every Spring Yale University organizes a fitness program for the community called The Yale Trail in which staff are encouraged to start a daily walking program. Last Spring, I posted a single photo taken during each of my morning walks to my Instagram account under the title “Good Morning New Haven.”’
Here is a gallery of my favorite photos taken during those walks in the Spring of 2021. All were taken with my iPhone using the Hipstamatic app which emulates the fantastic plastic toy cameras I used to favor.
Comments and feedback are always welcome and as always, thanks for looking!
Every Spring Yale University organizes a fitness program for the community called The Yale Trail in which staff are encouraged to start a daily walking program. Last Spring, I posted a single photo taken during each of my morning walks to my Instagram account under the title “Good Morning New Haven.“’
The 2022 program is now underway and runs through May 10, 2022. This year I intend to post a photo a day taken while walking along Dixwell Avenue.
Besides being perhaps the best named road in all of New Haven County, Dixwell Ave. is a commercial and residential wonderland that stretches for several miles through New Haven, Hamden, and North Haven and is positively stupid with urban delights such as hand painted murals, colorful signage, fascinating architecture, and intriguing statements of ethnicity and individuality. See below for a description of my photographs above and links to learn more about my subjects.
WHAT’S A HIPSTAMATIC?
Hipstamatic is an iPhone camera app that allows the photographer to emulate a variety of toy and lo-fi film cameras.
Toy camera photography became a cult thing in the photography community in the 90s and into the 21st century. Using cheap plastic medium format cameras such as the Diana and the Holga, renowned for aberrations such as light leaks and ill-formed plastic lenses, photographers are able to produce very distinctive ‘sloppy’ and artsy photos.
The Hipstamatic app allows the user to change virtual lenses, films, flashes to produce digital images that have the qualities of toy camera photographs. For this years gallery I have chosen a combination of settings that produces over-saturated high contrast images with a distinctive black rounded border that emulates the Through-The Viewfinder style of photography.
Please consider bookmarking this page and coming back each day to see what has caught my eye. This year I am challenging myself to take all photographs with the Hipstamatic toy camera app on my iPhone SE using the same settings for a cohesive gallery. I hope you enjoy my efforts.
04/24/22 “Faith” Jersey Barrier at entrance to Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Baptist Church, located just south of the intersection of Brewster Street and Dixwell Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511
TWENTY YEARS AGO, TODAY the FCC sent greetings and I was issued my first amateur radio license, Technician Class ticket, call sign KB1IAR.
Two weeks prior on a chilly Thursday evening, I had nervously sat for, and passed, the Element 2 license exam held at the Red Cross on Gano Street in Providence, RI.
A lifelong ambition, and something I rightfully should have done during my teen years as all the seeds and passion for all things radio were already planted and had taken root, was finally achieved at the age of 35.
Better late(r) than never…. my first amateur radio license issued 20 years ago today.
Sometime that January I was in my local Radio Shack purchasing materials to erect a long wire antenna for my shortwave radios at the new house I had purchased in Manville, RI when I spotted the Now You’re Talking! Technician Class amateur license guide on the shelf.
One of my best ever impulse purchases
I flipped through the pages and thought to myself, why not? The material looked straightforward, most of the technical electronic material was already familiar and I thought that if nothing else it would kind of neat to hold an amateur radio call sign, even if I never actually purchased a radio and got on the air.
This was also in the months immediately following the 9/11 attacks and it seemed like being able to communicate with others should more horrific acts occur, might be a good idea. So, I made an impulse purchase of the study guide and after two or three weeks I felt I was ready to take the test.
I of course DID get on the air pretty quickly. The first radios I purchased was a pair of Icom IC-1000H FM 2-meter transceivers, one I installed in my Ford Focus, and the second went into my first ‘radio shack’ an unused bedroom that served as my ‘man cave’ in our new home. This bedroom conveniently had the access door to the attic which allowed me to easily snake coax from the radio into the attic where I had installed a Ringo Ranger vertical antenna.
I easily got into the W1BIM repeater in Paxton, MA from my home in Lincoln, RI with my pair of Icom IC-2100H 2-meter transceivers – on in the house, one in the car.
After some initial mike-shyness, I finally screwed up the courage to key the mike and put my callsign out there. I was a regular check-in to the nightly George’s Old Timer’s Net held on the Central Massachusetts Amateur Radio Association 2-meter repeater in Paxton, Massachusetts – 146.970 Mhz / PL 114.8.
I also purchased my first hand-held radio, an Icon IC-V8 which was an entry level bare bones 5-watt transceiver for the 2-meter band. The IC-V8 was a distinctive looking radio with it’s green plastic casing and non-rectangular body. I still have the IC-V8 and use it on Tuesday evenings in the warmer weather months to check into the Meriden Amateur Radio Club Tuesday night 2-meter net from the front porch here in Cheshire.
My trusty Icom IC-V8 continues to get regular use to this day for checking into local 2-meter nets.
It wouldn’t be long before I upgraded to my General Class license a few months later earning me HF privileges that would allow me to work other hams around the world on the shortwave bands, but today I fondly recall and feel nostalgia for my initial experiences as a Tech.
The past two decades have been nothing short of TOTALLY AWESOME and I expect the next twenty to be just as good! If you are considering getting your ham radio license, I wholeheartedly encourage you to go for it. It’s never been easier to earn that first license and there are many resources out there to help you prepare for your exam. I’d be happy to help point you in the right direction if you’d like – drop me an email at james@ab1dq.com.
This morning I completed the Front Panel Board, the second board of the Elecraft K2 HF Transceiver Kit build that I began at the start of the year. After completing the Control Board on January 17, I took a complete month off working on other weekend projects before starting the Front Panel on February 21. I did state from the get go that I was going to take my time with this, my most ambitious kit build, and I’m staying true to my word.
The Front Panel Board is where all of the user controls are mounted. These include the large rotary encoder/tuning knob, the numeric keypad and pushbuttons, and five variable resistors. This section also includes the graphical LED status bar display and the LCD main display.
Assembly of the front panel starts by soldering the sixteen tactile push button switches to the printed circuit board. For a proper and neat professional appearance, it’s essential that all of the switches be mounted at a precise uniform distance from the surface of the board.
Elecraft provides a nifty switch spacing tool in the kit which is essentially a thin narrow bit of PCB material that is placed under each switch which is then pushed flush to the spacing tool. This clever method worked exceptionally well for me.
After the switches are mounted, the board is populated with the usual components – resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors. The front panel board has four ICs including the large 40 pin U1 which is mounted on the bottom side of the board and behind the display.
The front panel board also has a good bit of hardware to be attached including the eight-pin microphone jack and several spacers. Up to this point the instruction manual has been absolutely excellent in providing detailed easy to follow accurate directions.
However, I did encounter some difficulty when it came to mounting the main display components which consists of two backlight LEDs, their spacers, a white cardboard reflector, a frosted plastic diffuser, and the 40 pin LCD.
As I discussed in my previous post, the Elecraft K2 is a fabulous kit, but it’s a rather old kit, first prototyped a quarter century ago – in 1997! Understandably in the time since its introduction, some components become ‘unobtainium’ as the years go by. Vendors come and go and with advancing technology, manufacturers discontinue production of now archaic through-hole components with today’s increasing popularity of SMD architecture.
Thus, when one buys a K2 kit today, it will come with several pages of errata that must be carefully consulted and reviewed. Builders in 2022 will find themselves crossing out sections, sometimes whole pages, of the original manual, and adding notes about the replacement modern components packaged with their kit.
This was the case with the display assembly. I was instructed to cross out most of the directions pertaining to the installation of the display on pages 27 and 28 of the manual and to follow the alternative directions provided as errata.
The revised directions call for the builder to first insert the leads of a pair of rectangular LEDs through plastic spacers and solder the LEDs flush to the board to the left and the right side of where the LCD will be mounted.
Between the two LEDs, the builder places a white cardboard backlight reflector and then mounts a frosted plastic diffuser by placing it over the the two LEDs on the left and the right side. The diffuser has an indent on each side to accomondate the LEDs.
I found this all went precisely as described until I came to the step that instructed me to place the LCD flush on top of the diffuser and then solder the 20 pins of the LCD to the associated pads on the PCB.
None of the LCD pins were long enough to go through the holes in the pads on the board. If pressed flush to the diffuser the LCD pins just barely touched the pads.
With the LCD flush against the frosted crystal diffuser, the pins are too short to penetrate the holes in the pads.
A view of the bottom side of the board showing the inadequate length of the LCD pins.
I carefully checked the instructions and my work. I was certain I mounted the LEDs correctly and flush to the board with their spacers, and the cut outs on the bottom side of the plastic diffuser neatly accommodated the LEDs perfectly.
Realizing that proper positioning of the LCD would be critical for the PCB to properly fit in the front panel and knowing that not getting the spacing correct would also give the finished radio a sloppy appearance, I reached out to Elecraft for help via their website.
I dreaded the prospect of having to de-solder 20 pins and run the risk of damaging the LCD if I needed to remove it after it was soldered in place. I wanted to get as much information as I could before proceeding.
I received an email reply from Dave at Elecraft who is their K2 support guy within a couple of days. Dave stated that it was ‘perfectly normal’ for the LCD pins to just touch the top pads on the PCB and that they do not need to protrude through the holes. He said that his last K2 build was like this and suggested that I carefully solder the 20 pins from the topside, but to make sure the LCD is level and parallel to the board.
I did as Dave recommended, carefully aligning the LCD so it was level and evenly spaced above the board. I started by soldering each of the corner pins and confirming the LCDs position after each solder joint. Once done, I applied solder to the pads on the bottom of the board to let it flow through the hole to help ensure solid contact.
However, after I soldered just under half of the LCD pins, I realized I had left out the cardboard reflector. D’oh! There was no way I could slide the stiff cardboard under the pins at this point and I didn’t want to have to de-solder so many pins, so I came up with a workaround.
I took a piece of white copier paper and cut a rectangle to the same size as the cardboard reflector. Cutting the paper in half, I was able to slip both halves between the gap in the pins on the bottom of the LCD and position them in proper place. I held them in place with a bit of cellophane tape.
From here on out the rest of the front panel assembly went smoothly. Again I encountered the need to reference the errata for the main encoder knob as Elecraft includes a different unit than the one referenced in the original instruction manual. The encoder in my kit required me to solder a few parts into an auxiliary board to which the encoder was attached. The auxiliary board is then attached to the back of the front panel board.
The rotary encoder auxiliary board.
The last step was to mount the completed front panel board inside of the front panel. Before doing so, the manual lists about 30 resistance checks for the board. Each test point checked out as specified to ground – excellent!
I was very pleased that after I carefully mounted the board the front panel looked perfect. All of the push buttons were a proper and uniform height through the holes on the panel. All knobs, including the main encoder dial, were also correctly mounted and turned with ease. Best of all the main display LCD that caused me so much grief, looked perfect under the front bezel.
Completed Front Panel PCB, front.Completed Front Panel PCB, back.The completed front panel…. it ‘looks’ like a radio anyway.
“Unique ham radio kits for the budget minded.” That’s what the masthead proclaims on the QRPGuys website and that is exactly what you’ll find there – a collection of project kits for the builder/QRPer that aren’t found on other kit sites and all offered at a more than fair price.
Current transceiver kits include their AFP-FSK Digital Transceiver, now in its third edition and they also offer a wide variety of other QRP essentials including several antennas and tuners, test gear including power meters, attenuators and filters and other accessories,
The QRP Guys are an affiliation of a “who’s who” of QRP building and will give you an idea of the innovative and high-quality products they develop. Ken LoCasale (WA4MNT) provides kit mechanical design, board layout and documentation, and NorCal cofounder Doug Hendricks (KI6DS) is credited with logistic support and beta testing.
Circuit design is by Steve Weber (KD1JV) of Pacific Antenna, Dan Tayloe, creator of the N7VE SWR Bridge, and Cliff Donley (K8TND). Both Steve and “Kazu” Terasaki (AG5NS) author firmware, technical assistance is given by beta builder Yin Shih (N9YS) and John Stevens (K5JS) is credited with assisting Ken with website maintenance.
Building the QRPGuys 40-30-20 M End Fed Antenna
The QRPGuys multiband end fed antenna meets my definition of an easy build with only 16 solder-in components on the main tuner circuit board and the two traps. I started as I do with all of my kit builds by inventorying and arranging all of the parts. I have been using cigar boxes with clasps on their lids to prevent me from losing small parts before they are needed. Cigar boxes are also ideal for storing works in progress kits when a project will extend beyond a single building session.
This easy to build kit has a minimal number of parts.
The prospective builder should be forewarned that of those sixteen components, four of them are inductors that must be hand-wound on toroid coil forms. Many builders seem to abhor the winding of coils, and while I find it sometimes fiddly work, I’ve come to not mid the process.
I give props to the writers of the QRPGuys manual, as they provided some of the clearest instruction on how to wind the inductors, including the number of loops and where to place the taps. The manual also includes a nicely done illustration of each inductor and hints on how to assure the builder wound them correctly.
The diagram from the instruction manual clearly depicts how to wind the four inductors.
The inclusion of Thermaleze® brand magnet wire for the inductors was also a nice feature – the enamel coating was quickly dispatched after a few seconds of exposure to my Zippo cigar torch.
The entire build, including the winding of the four toroids, building the traps and measuring the three driven element lengths of wire took me less than 2 hours working at a leisurely pace on a winter’s Sunday morning.
BeforeAfter
About the Antenna
Field testing this antenna will have to wait a few more weeks for more reasonable weather here in Connecticut, but my plan is to use this antenna for QRP POTA activations this year with various homebuilt radios such as the Ramsey QRP20 transmitter I assembled last week. The end-fed design should make for easy deployment as a sloper while operating from the field with easy access to the tuning controls from my operating position.
The tuner circuit design is as straightforward as it gets – your basic tunable L-C circuit with a varicon capacitor. But the kit also employs the N7VE LED absorption bridge that keeps SWR to a minimum of 2:1 when set to the tune position. According to the kit documentation, the LED indicates only reflected power. Full LED brilliance will indicate an SWR at 4:1 or greater. At half brilliance SWR is approximately 2:1, and the LED will completely extinguish at 1:1.
I was impressed with the apparent high quality of the PCBs and components, and I found the instructions and supporting documentation to be exceptionally well written – easy to follow and understand.
If you would like to build the QRPGuys Multi-band End Fed Antenna, you can purchase the kit on their website here. The current price of the kit is $40 USD.
If you have built this kit, or have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line at james@ab1dq.com.
One of the now defunct electronics kitters, whose products I personally appreciated ‘back in the day,’ was Ramsey Electronics.
Ramsey, which still exists as a firm today, but no longer sells electronic kits, produced a fairly expansive line of straight forward do it yourself solder kits that were not too complicated for the new to intermediate builder, and that came with exceptional documentation which not only provided the builder with detailed step-by-step instructions, but also included information on circuit theory explaining why and how it worked, and what the sub-circuits and individual components did. Often included were suggestions for kit mods, sometimes as provided by previous builders of the kit. Their motto was “Build It, Learn It, Achieve It, and Enjoy It!“
The Stereo FM Transmitter, a typical Ramsey kit which featured a sturdy single square printed circuit board and Ramsey’s ubiquitous four-piece plastic case. This case accommodated many of the most popular Ramsey kits and gave the finished product an easily identifiable and clean appearance.
After providing great kits to the electronics hobbyist community for more than four decades, Ramsey shut down its kit division in 2016 and has been sorely missed by hams and other electronics hobbyists ever since. Today the occasional unbuilt Ramsey kit will appear at local hamfests and on eBay, so if you’ve never had the experience of building a Ramsey kit, there’s still a bit of hope for you. For an appreciation of the breadth of their kit offerings, you can browse of one of their catalogs here.
Building a 90’s era Ramsey Kit – the QRP20 CW Transmitter
Recently, after coming across the Ramsey Active SW antenna kit I built back in the 90s, before I earned my ham ticket, but was an active shortwave listener, I found myself feeling nostalgic for the Ramsey kit experience and found an unbuilt 20 meter transmitter kit on eBay. When the auction ended four days later my bank account was $32 lighter and I found myself eagerly waiting for my new kit to arrive.
The QRP20
The kit promptly arrived a few days later, well packaged, and just as described. I was happy to see that it was unopened and complete. My winning lot included not only the QRP20 transmitter kit, but also the matching plastic case complete with pre-drilled and labeled front and back panels.
Given my recent obsession for building ham gear into cigar boxes, I planned to skip the signature Ramsey case but I realized the pre-drilled front and back panels would make an excellent template for drilling out my cigar box cabinet.
The QRP20 enjoyed favorable reviews on eHam Product Reviews with a solid four out of five stars average rating. Common among the reviews were observations that the transmitter was easy to assemble and had no drift or chirp. Several builders commented they had upgraded the cheap driver and amp Q2 and Q3 that shipped with the kit for more robust transistors for increased RF output.
The QRP20 is specified to put out 1.0 watts of RF power drawing 1/4-amp current from a 12-15 VDC source and it has two unique features to set it apart from competitors’ offerings.
The first is a space on the PCB to install a second crystal or to wire in a crystal socket. The second frequency, or socket, is selected by a pushbutton on the front panel. Ramsey included a single 14.060 crystal with the kit and leaves it to the builder to use the second crystal slot to accessorize as he desires. (I plan to add a crystal socket myself.)
The other welcome feature is the QRP20’s built in T/R switch – a nice bonus feature that will make for easy mating to the matching Ramsey HR20 DC receiver or any other QRP receiver.
Ramsey offered the QRP20 for many years and over that time, the circuit was tweaked, the instruction manual was updated, and eventually some parts were substituted for others.
The manual in my kit was copyright 1990 and in addition to the manual, the kit included a large separate fold out parts finder diagram of the circuit board. This was most useful as this generation of the QRP20 PCB did not include screening on the component side showing individual part layout. With the Parts Finder diagram laid out on my workbench I had no difficulties identifying where every component belonged.
Assembly took about 2 hours over 3 sessions. I tend to work slowly and deliberately when kit building, and I’m a big proponent of the adage, measure 2x, cut once. In kit building, I tend to identify/measure component values thrice, solder once.
I mentioned above that over time, Ramsey modified the circuit and also some components were changed, most likely due to changing availability from suppliers. I encountered a couple of these changes in my build – all of which involved the inductors – which required a bit of extra caution on my part.
First, the Parts Finder showed a square footprint for L1, an inductor with a tuning slug. The diagram labeled it as L1 40M, with two arrows pointing to where the solder points were for the inductor. The 20-meter version of the kit that I was building, included an axial inductor with no tuning slug, the type that looks like a resistor complete with color-code bands.
The parts list stated that L1 for the QRP20 may have been either a 2.2 uH or a 3.9 uH inductor. I was able to confirm that my kit included a 2.2 uH inductor by the red-gold-red color code, and I verified the value with my L/C meter.
Inductors L2, L4, and L5 presented a bit of a challenge too. Every printed reference to these 3 inductors in the manual stated they were 220 uH and the parts list on page 20 described them as molded brown with red stripes. There was no mention in the printed instructions that the kit may have included an alternative set of inductors with different values for L2, L4 and L5. However, on the page 20 parts inventory was a parenthetical hand-written statement under the printed entry for these inductors which read “or 100uH -green 100.” There were three beehive shaped green components with a ‘100’ stamped on the top, so I felt confident these were L2, L4 and L5.
Lastly, L3 and L6 were 1.0 uH inductors but neither the instruction manual nor the parts inventory described their appearance or markings. I found two wire-wound inductors in the parts bag but they had no color code or printed markings and they were too long to easily fit in the matching holes on the PCB. But by process of elimination, I concluded these were L3 and L6 and again I confirmed their value with my L/C meter. I needed to use extra caution to carefully bend the leads 180 degress, back under the inductor body, and then 90 degrees again through the PCB holes.
The only other construction issue worthy of mentioning is the special care I took take to properly identify the leads for the four bipolar transistors. While the Parts Identifier diagram had a circular outline for each transistor with a flattened side, it did not label any of the holes as B, C and E. I connected each transistor to my transistor tester to identify the base, collector and emitter, drew a diagram in my notebook to keep the terminals straight and then cross referenced my sketch with the the schematic and Parts Layout to make sure I got these right. Having to resolder transistors after I snipped the excess leads would be a pain.
Cigar Box Considerations and Mods
I chose a nice small Nub cigar box for my QRP20 cabinet. The cigar box dimensions were 6 1/4″ x 4 7/8″ x 2 1/2″ which meant it should nicely accommodate the Ramsey 4″ x 4 3/4″ PCB. My plan was to mount the circuit board to the bottom of the cigar box and drill out holes on the front of the box to accommodate the tuning potentiometer and the crystal selector push button switch. The meant with careful drilling, I could mount both the pot and the switch direct to the PCB as Ramsey intended and have them poke through properly aligned holes in the front of the cigar box.
However, the depth of the box was a bit too long, which meant the rear connections soldered to the circuit board (antenna, receiver null, power connection and key) would not reach the back panel of the box and I would have to use chassis mounted parts for these connectors with jumpers to their connections on the PCB. I had a pair of chassis mount BNC RF connectors on hand as well as DC power barrel connector. I had a nice NOS Radio Shack momentary push-on push-off SPST button switch that I wanted to add to the back panel, so I relocated the 1/8″ jack for the key to the side panel.
Admittedly, the power switch isn’t really necessary as the transmitter is powered by an external connection to 13.8 VDC but since I added the switch, I thought it would be a nice touch to put place a miniature LED power on indicator on the front panel.
As the typical 5mm LED has a current draw of 20 mA and can handle forward voltage of 2 VDC max, I’d need to include a dropping resistor so the LED wouldn’tfry when connected to the 13.8 VDC power source.
The formula to calculate resistance is R = (Vs – Vf) / If where: Vs is Supply Voltage Vf is Forward Voltage Drop for the LED If is Forward Current Drop for the LED
Doing the math for the 13.8 VDC source: R = (13.8 – 2.0v) / 0.02 R = 590 ohms
(I padded the results a bit and grabbed a 660 1/4-watt resistor out of my stock supply.)
Final Assembly
As mentioned, the cigar box would require precise measurement. Locating the placement of the four holes on the bottom of the cigar box for mounting the PCB was easy and a good starting point.
My plan was to use 5/8″ spacers to elevate the PCB so the tuning knob would be exactly halfway between the top and the bottom of the front panel. This is where the Ramsey provided front panel came in handy as a template to get the spacing for the hole for the crystal selection push button spot on.
Since the pushbutton switch is closer to the PCB than the tunining potentiometer, I decided to place the power on LED directly above the button to give the front of the transmitter a nice symmetrical appearance.
The front and rear panels from the Ramsey custom case made an excellent template for drilling my cigar box.
Using the Ramsey rear panel piece again as a template, I was able to drill out nice venly spaced holes to mount the BNCs, power connector and power switch.
The Nub cigar box I chose for this project was a good choice not only because of its size, but also because it doesn’t have a hinged lid. The top of the smal Nub box slides on and off, which means it’s not suited for mounting radio controls to. The QRP20 transmitter with its limited operator controls made the Nub box a fine choice.
The completed QRP20 with my Lionel J38 straight key… and a can of SUPERNAUT IPA. (what a life!)
Testing and performance
Once completed, I tested my QRP20 in the shack, connecting it to a wattmeter and my dummy load. I connected my Lionel J38 straight key and powered it up with 13.8 volts DC from my Ameritron shack power supply.
Tuning my Xiegu G90 transceiver in the shack to 14.060 I was hearing my signal spot-on with the tuning knob set just past mid-point (6 on the scale of 10). I was very pleased to see I was getting just under 1.0 watts RF out…. Success!
As specified, my QRP20 produced @ 1.0 watts RF. My signal was heard precisely at 14.060 MHz with the tuning potentiometer set just beyond mid-point as shown.
What’s next?
I’d like to take this nifty 20M transmitter out into the field this summer for some QRP POTA/SOTA ops. So I will next need to consider what I will use for a matching receiver. I’ve got a few DC receiver kits I’ve previously built on hand including the most excellent TenTec 1056, a Pacific Antenna Easy Receiver, and appropriately enough, a Ramsey HR series receiver. However, all of these were built for 40 meters. I could modify one of them for 20 meters or I could build something new. Stay tuned.
Before I take this li’l rig out, I plan to complete a couple of mods. I mentioned I want to add an external crystal socket to make full use of the crystal selector button and I believe I will also try swapping out Q2 and Q3 for a bit more oomph. While I love QRP, going from 1.0 watt to 2.5 watts out could make an appreciable difference.
In conclusion
So, I had fun with this build, it brought back memories of Ramsey kit builds from years ago, and in the end I have a nice servicable 20 M QRP rig for future field ops.
What’s your story? Have you ever built a Ramsey kit? What was your experience? Do you miss Ramsey? What other kit providers today are filling the gap Ramsey left behind?
Drop me a line at james@ab1dq.com or leave a comment and let me know what you think!
The second build in Bob Heil’s Pine Board Project is the power supply. Both the transmitter as well as the pre-amplifier feature vacuum tubes which means they require a high DC voltage for the tube plates (B voltage) as well as a lower 6.3 VAC filament voltage.
I had previously built the AES K101 battery eliminator kit for my vintage Arborphone coffin radio, which I no longer needed it for. The K101 is currently collecting dust on a workshop shelf and would have worked well with the Pine Board project. But building is fun, and Bob provided schematics and instructions for a nice simple classic tube power supply designed around the 6X5 rectifier tube.
Thanks to Bob’s excellent online documentation and HamNation videos, I had no difficulty building the power supply. The only modification I made to my build, besides choosing to mount it in a cigar box rather than on a slab of pine, was that I added a neat-O vintage NOS voltage meter.
My first build of the Heil Pine Board Power Supply w. voltage meter (left). Wiring neatly hidden away on the bottom side of the cigar box lid (right.
The power supply worked great, put out about 180VDC B+, and it looked great (to me anyway!)
However, a couple of months ago, when I finally completed my build of the transmitter (watch for my future blog post), I was disappointed to record less than one watt into my dummy load on both 40 and 80 meters. I assumed I had botched something in my transmitter build and began to retrace and double check my work only to discover that all looked right.
I went back to Bob Heil’s Pine Board Project website and discovered that since he published the original plans for the power supply, which I had used, he had since uploaded modified plans replacing the 6X5 rectifier tube with a solid-state bridge rectifier. In a more recent video upload, Bob explained that changing the rectifier would result in a significant increase in B+ voltage and that it would in turn increase the transmitter RF out to the neighborhood of 5 watts.
Following the updated schematic and layout plan, I modified my power supply but soldering a bridge rectifier to an octal tube base and disconnecting the center tap on the power transformer as instructed. This worked as described – my B+ voltage was now approaching 400 volts and the transmitter was putting out over 4 watts into my dummy load.
However, all was not right in the world. Upon closer inspection of the revised schematic, I saw that where there was a single B+ output originally, the capacitor/resistor network was reconfigured with two taps so a B+ of lesser than 200 VDC would be available for the 12AX7 tube in the pre-amp. According to the datasheet, the plate voltage on the 12AX7 should not exceed 300 volts.
I attempted to modify my power-supply for the second tap but ran into difficulty doing so. The version I build had included a third filter cap but the Heil redesign returned to two filter caps. I became vexed and now realized I had misunderstood the bleed resistor in my initial 3 cap build to be part of the resistor voltage drop circuit in the newly published solid-state design. Regardless of where I tried to tap the circuit for the second B+ voltage, it always equaled the near 400+ volts I was now getting on my first tap.
I decided since I had a bag full of bridge rectifiers, a drawer full of 20 MFD 450V caps in my workshop, I would salvage the transformer and begin a completely new build of the power supply this weekend working directly from the new Heil schematic.
I wanted to expand on my meter mod – since the power supply would be providing two different B+ voltages, I planned to add a second meter so I could easily confirm that B+1 for the transmitter and B+2 for the pre-amp were not the same and appropriate for their respective circuits. I purchased a pair of modern 500 volt meters since my vintage NOS meter I originally used maxed out at 300 volts.
I also decided since all of the components excepting the power transformer and meters would be mounted on the bottom side of the lid, I would abandon the terminal-strips and point-to-point wiring and instead use a perforated PCB board to make a subassembly for the filter caps and voltage drop resistors. Working rom the schematic, I designed the layout on my PC first and the built to my design.
PCB layout design left, actual on right. I did not have any 33K ohm 2-watt resistors on hand, so I wired 2 22Ks in series with a 10K each to get ‘close enuff.’
Next, I chose an appropriate cigar box from my stash for the build. Since I planned to mount the two meters to the top of the lid this time, I chose my Leather Rose cigar box as it was the widest. It was an excellent choice, I think, with one problem.
The shallow wide box was designed to hold a couple dozen cigars and the lid only needed to seal the box to protect the contents from drying out. The strain put upon the flimsy staple hinges by the heavy transformer was a bit much and I plan to replace the hinges with sturdier ‘real hinges.’
I loved the artwork on the Leather Rose cigar box (left), it was a shame to drill into it, but drill I did. Using the new mini drill press my sister Kristen had just gifted me for Xmas, I did some precision chassis drilling in short order (right).
Once the chassis was drilled out, the rest of the assembly went smoothly and quickly. Having all of the capacitors and resistors on the PCB subassembly made for short work of all connections once the board and other chassis mounted parts were attached. Before mounting the transformer, I made all of the output connections and built a ground bus. Once the transformer was attached, it did not take long to wire up the power cord, fuse, switch and 6.3 VAC pilot light.
A look under the hood, shunning point-to-point connections for the PCB subassembly saved time, space and made for a neat construction.
I completed all of the work over my Saturday and Sunday morning this weekend, working slowly and carefully. My patient deliberate methods paid off as there were no snap, crackles or booms or smoke or open flames when first fired up.
Look Ma – no smoke!Left: B+ No. 1 will be delivering nearly 400 VDC to the transmitter. Right: B+ No. 2 will provide the 12AX7 tube’s plate with a safe 190 VDC.
Finally, I want to acknowledge that this project produces lethal voltages, something we don’t deal with much anymore in this era of silicon devices. I grew up mucking around in high-voltage hollow state radio & TV chassis, and I am well aware of the proper precautions necessary for safety’s sake.
Despite the fact my regular practice is to discharge electrolytic caps and I try to be super mindful about knowing what I am touching with my hands when exploring a circuit, still I managed to shock myself a couple weeks ago while trying to diagnose why my two B+ voltages were the same after I did the first solid state mod. I was holding the power supply in my hand with the box opened, visually examining the circuitry when I accidentally touched the power out terminal strip on the top side of the box lid with my right hand.
Fortunately, despite my negligence, I did have my left hand in my pocket, a good safety practice I learned early on to prevent lethal currents from passing through the heart. That said, I encourage anyone who may be inspired by my blog and Bob Heil’s excellent plans to give this project a try – do be knowledgeable about the dangers of working with lethal voltages and how to be safe. In the end, you are solely responsible for any risks you take building or working on such circuits.
Reddy Kilowatt may seem to be a funny guy, but he does mean business!
Have a comment, question, or a personal experience to share? Post a reply or please drop me a line at james@ab1dq.com.
Legendary sound engineer Bob Heil, architect behind many signature rock artist signature sounds (The Who, The Grateful Dead, Peter Frampton, Joe Walsh to name a few), is also renowned in the amateur radio community.
Bob has engineered and his firm Heil Sound retails high performance microphones and other premium gear for the ham community, he has authored books and numerous articles for the ham community and is one of the most sought-after speakers for amateur radio conferences. Bob hosted the popular TWiT video podcast HamNation from 2011 through 2020; archived copies of the podcast remain a valuable resource to hams today.
In the Spring of 2017, Bob Heil introduced to the amateur radio community, The Pine Board Project, afour-part do-it-yourself AM transmitter project. In earlier times, building your own gear was a larger part of the ham radio experience. RF theory and design made up a larger portion the exam material and while studying, many prospective Novices would construct their own basic receivers and transmitters while studying for their licenses.
Plans for these projects were widely published – from the American Radio Relay League’s handbook and monthly magazine, QST, to other popular radio and electronics magazines such as CQ, 73, Popular Electronics, Radio TV Experimenter, and Elementary Electronics.
The Heil Pine Board project was a throw-back to these times. Bob broke the project into four separate sub-projects for the builder to construct: an RF field strength meter, a high voltage power supply, an audio pre-amplifier and equalizer, and a 40/80-meter transmitter capable of approximately 5 watts AM output.
Several episodes of HamNation included featured segments in which Bob would take the prospective builder through circuit design, parts layout, and circuit theory. Bob published the schematics and board layout diagrams on the Heil website and even provided parts lists with sourcing information, giving the names of firms that carried some of the obscure parts from an earlier era, along with stock numbers and prices.
Bob’s enthusiasm for the projects as expressed in the videos was infectious. His presentation style was straight forward, detailed and inviting for the new builder. Along the way he featured photos and reports of viewers’ work.
I was hooked from the get-go. I grew up spending hours on ends in my grandfather’s TV/radio workshop in our basement and had read dozens and dozens of articles for building projects that appeared in the yellowing pages of his electronics magazines from the 60s. I had built many an electronic kit in my time, but beyond the occasional simple crystal radios or basic transistor circuits, I never did much scratch building.
I started building the projects a couple of years ago, closely following the directions and completed the field strength meter, the power supply and the pre-amplifier. Then, true to form, I either got distracted by other things (other projects, family, work, life itself).
Last summer (2021) I made a resolution to focus and complete the unfinished projects on the shelves of my workshop and decided it was time to complete the Heil project.
Friends who know me well, know that in recent years I had enjoyed the occasional cigar. Many a workweek transitioned into the weekend by enjoying a fine Leaf by Oscar and an Old-Fashioned with my dear friends Carl & Steve at the Owl. Every week or so, the Owl staff would leave empty wooden cigar boxes out at the curb for folks to take and I started nabbing a few thinking they might make good chassis for ham radio projects.
Since then I had built a few recent projects into my cigar boxes and thought that it might be fun to put my cigar box spin on Bob Heil’s transmitter project and built the transmitter into a cigar box and then rebuilt the other projects into their own cigar boxes.
At this point I’m going to blog on my Heil Pine Box/Cigar Box Project experience in a series of articles, starting with the power supply. As I mentioned I initially built this on a pine board and my initial build used the 5XT rectifier tube using Bob’s original design. I have replaced the 5XT with the solid-state rectifier, building the modified power supply as designed by and published by Bob.
Thanks again to Bob Heil for designing and sharing and promoting the Pine Board Project – it has provided me with hours and hours of enjoyment so far, and there’s much more fun ahead.
Have you built the Pine Board Project? Leave me a comment or drop me a line at james@ab1dq.com. Jump to my post about my power supply build here.
As the proverb goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So, after procrastinating for two plus years after my XYL and soulmate Ellen gifted me the Elecraft K2 HF Transceiver Kit for our tenth anniversary, I finally got my nerve up to start what will easily be my most ambitious kit build ever.
It is my intent to blog about my experience as I proceed, circuit board by circuit board, sharing my experience and inviting others who have built the K2 to share as well.
The Control Board
Having set up and outfitted a new protected work bench using a folding banquet table in the shack where I will work only on the K2, I started work on the first circuit board, the Control Board on January 9, 2022.
As with many kits I’ve built, the Elecraft instructions call for the builder to start by inserting and soldering all of the fixed resistors first. As others have reported, I found the instructions to be, for the most part, very well written. The instructions for the fixed resistors provided each resistor’s value in ohms as well as the color code and the builder is encouraged to install the resistors with the first color band towards the top or the right of the circuit board to facilitate verifying the correct resistor is in the correct space when reviewing or troubleshooting your work.
As electronic components have gotten increasingly smaller, my vision has gotten progressively worse as I’ve gotten older. Whenever kit building, I always verify values with my VOM before inserting any resistors into a circuit board. After installing the 13 resistors, the instructions called for the installation of seven resistor arrays and one trimmer pot, all easily identified.
The Control Board after installing all resistors.
Next the builder needs to install an 82 mH inductor, which I confirmed I had the correct part with my L/C meter, followed by a pair of silicon diodes. I then encountered the first variation in my kit. Where the original PCB had a screened space for D3, the instructions called for an 82K ohm resistor to be installed here.
The instructions next call for the builder to install and solder in place 36 fixed capacitors. Identifying and verifying the value of each capacitor was a notable challenge. Not only were the stamped or printed values on the caps miniscule, the capacitors also varied in type, shape, and manufacturer and it was clear that some of Elecraft’s suppliers changed over the twenty-five years they have been offering the K2 kit, as some of the caps did not match in appearance to the identifier pictures in the otherwise excellent parts list in the appendix.
To guarantee I placed the correct capacitor in the correct space, I took the time to identify every capacitor and laid them out neatly on my workbench in the same order the instructions called for their installation.
To identify the values, I used the camera on my iPhone and zoom in on the part. Sometimes when the value is etched on the capacitor, I needed to shift it so my bench light catches the labeling just right to read. I took the time and used my L/C meter to verify the value of every capacitor.
LEFT: using my iPhone as a digital magnifier to read capacitor labels CENTER: checking capacitor values with an L/C meter RIGHT: laying out verified capacitors in the order of installation
Once all of the capacitors were laid out in the order of installation, I carefully installed each capacitor into its space, having taken the time again to double-check values with the L/C meter. It was a slow process, but in the end, I felt very confident all of the capacitors were soldered in the correct space giving me peace of mind. Trouble shooting for mis-placed capacitors would be a very tedious process if necessary.
The next several steps went along easily as I installed the electrolytic capacitors, a trimmer cap, a dozen bipolar junction transistors, a pair of crystals, two voltage regulators, one IC socket and various connectors. All of these parts were easily identified, and when working with the transistors, I proceeded in the same manner as I did with the fixed caps, identifying and verifying value, arranging them in the order of installation and double-checking values as I installed each.
The bipolar transistors, values checked and laid out in order of installation.
Now it was time to install the ICs on the control board, and this is where I first ran into trouble.
The very first chip was an NE602, the AGC mixer. I mentioned that the K2 has been on the market for twenty-four years and over the course of a quarter century, technology moves on and the availability of parts change. By the time Elecraft had kitted my specific K2, the NE602 was no longer widely available in through-the-hole DIP casing. The industry had since begun moving on away from through-the-hole components in favor of tiny, less expensive surface-mount versions.
Instead of the DIP version of the NE602, my kit came with an equivalent SMD NE612 which was pre-soldered to a small square ‘carrier board.’ The carrier board is a PC board cut to the same footprint of an 8 pin DIP case and the builder is instructed to cut eight 1-inch pieces of wire, insert them into the eight holes on the carrier board, solder them in place, then insert the bottom ends of these wires through the DIP-spaced holes and solder to the control board.
I damaged the carrier board while attaching the wires by working sloppily with a too-hot iron. The carrier board was not of the same high quality as the control board which featured double plated holes. The carrier board had plating only on the top of the holes, and I managed to lift the plating off of the number 2 and number 3 hole, breaking connectivity. I tried to bridge the contacts to the chip contacts with a solder blob, but that only made a bigger mess of things.
LEFT: the Control Board space for U1, an NE602 DIP RIGHT: The SMD carrier board for U1 which I damaged with a heavy hand and hot iron
Elecraft has a form on their website to order replacement parts and I reached out on January 1qth to inquire about purchasing a replacement NE612 and carrier board. I did receive an acknowledgement that they received my inquiry from a mail bot, but as of this writing, four days later I have not received an actual reply.
In the meantime, I began wondering whether I could still find DIP cased versions of the NE602 elsewhere online. I searched Mouser, Digi-key, eBay and Amazon and found that an Amazon vendor had some available, which I ordered. The vendor did not disclose the name of the manufacturer nor the source country, but I’m assuming the chips were manufactured in China. I did order five (there are three others elsewhere in the K2) and they arrived within a day or two.
I discussed my dilemma with one of my Elmers, Steve, KZ1S, who has built many a kit in his day and is a physics professor who works with electronic circuits and RF in his work.
Steve offered a couple of suggestions. The first was to use a proper SMD to DIP converter board with proper pins spaced correctly. I liked this idea very much, but the drawback is that it would require me soldering the SMD chip to the converter board and again, with my failing vision and dexterity, this would be a bit of an unpleasant challenge.
A proper SMD – DIP converter
Steve also suggested looking for genuine NOS chips online, either on eBay, or from Radwell International. Steve mentioned you can source just about any obsolete part with Radwell, but they can be expensive. I did locate the NE602s on there with a retail price of about $5 – not a deal-breaker, but given I need four for the K2, that’s an additional $20 + shipping.
For the time being, I decided to place a DIP socket on the control board and once in place, I inserted the NE602 of dubious origin I purchased from Amazon in the socket. For the time being this would let me continue with the build and be able to test resistances. I could then swap out the AGC chip for a genuine NOS or SMD + converter at a later date.
I finished the build of the control board this morning, directly soldering in the remaining ICs and adding the two CW key-shaping capacitors on the solder side of the board.
After carefully double-checking all of my work, I used my VOM to perform the resistance checks. All of my test resistances were within range, excepting U6 pin 29 (DASH) and U6 pin 30 (DOT/PTT) which were marginally over spec. The acceptable range for both is 70K – 90K ohms and I measured 96.6K on pin 29 and 96.8K on pin 30. I will revisit these values later.
So that concludes the build of the first circuit board, the Control Board. I counted a total of 110 components soldered to the board and I completed the work in eight days working at my deliberately leisurely pace.
I welcome comments and suggestions from any and all, particularly from anyone who has built the K2 and had to deal with the SMD carrier board themselves. Drop me a line at james@ab1dq.com to share your thoughts and opinions.
AB1DQ 