In the July 2020 update, I made mention that my BITX40 BITX’d the dust, so to speak. Receive worked, but transmit failed. In Part 1 of the BITX40 Rebuild series I talked about the history of my radio, some of the modifications I’ve made, and how badly I messed it up when troubleshooting the problem! …
Category: Arduino
Oct 20
uSDX (SSB with a QCX) Update
Earlier this year I wrote about a modification/hack to the the QRP Labs QCX called uSDX that turns a normal CW only QCX into a SSB capable radio. It uses the Atmega 328p chip as an SDR, and uses a high end technology call EER to modulate SSB out of an amplifier made for CW. …
Oct 09
BITX40 Rebuild Part 1: Mistakes, Planning and Teardown
Things have been pretty busy around MiscDotGeek, and we’ve barely had time for Radio Related things. As I mentioned in the July 2020 update, my BITX40 quit transmitting while sitting stationary on my desk, dutifully doing its job as a JS8 radio, it quit transmitting. I put the uSDX in its place, only to have …
Nov 25
BITX40 VFO/BFO with Arduino
Last year I wrote that Arduino was so easy, but I didn’t really follow up on that. A few days ago, RC (KE6BGN) commented that he was wondering if any progress had been made on the Arduino based VFO/BFO for the BITX40. There has been, and I have made a short video for your viewing …
Apr 12
MiscDotGeek talks Radio Homebrew on W5KUB!
Here at MiscDotGeek we’ve been pretty busy with Real Life Stuff, and it’s been hard to find time to hack on radios lately. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have time to talk about hacking on radios! And that’s exactly what we did last week on the W5KUB Amateur Radio Roundtable broadcast. In fact, we …
Nov 05
Is QRP Saving Ham Radio?
Recently on HackADay.com there was an article called “FT8: SAVING HAM RADIO OR KILLING IT?” which drew fire from some and praise from others. The article title itself was a little click-bait-y but justifiable. According to the source article over at flexradio.com FT8 lovers and haters are split almost 50/50. Some say its awful because FT8 …
Mar 24
Dual Band BITX40 Project Update
I’ve written about putting together a dual band BITX40 in the past and the methods I used had varying success. The idea was to augment the built in filters with switched in/out add-on filters from QRP-Labs. This is a sound idea, but the layout of Low Pass Filter on the BITX40 really didn’t allow it …
Feb 25
A Simple 5v Power Supply for Arduino, U3S and more
Many electronics experimenters and builders take the lowly 7805 regulator for granted, and we pop it in a circuit without a second thought and move along. But for beginners who are wondering how to power their Arduino or other 5 volt project (such as the QRP Labs U3S) from a 12v-13.8v power supply, the 7805 …
Jan 27
Arduino is so easy that MisDotGeek gets a new header
I sat down at my desk tonight not sure what I was going to do. Right now I’m between QRP projects, as my uBITX hasn’t arrived yet and I’m not quite ready to put up my new antenna (I’ve got some building to do). So I grabbed an Arduino from my parts bin and a …