Category: Electronics

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 …

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Experimental Methods in RF Design is on Clearance

Hey everyone, just a short post to let you know that Experimental Methods in RF Design (EMFRD) is now on clearance at the ARRL’s store for just $20. This is an incredible deal for anybody who’s the least bit interested in Amateur Radio home brewing. Where to get EMFRD You can get it right now …

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LED Magnifier Upgrade Time!

Hey everyone, in this post we’re going do do something a little different. I don’t usually do a product review just for the sake of doing a product review, but I couldn’t pass this one up. I use my lighted magnifier all the time. It was given to me a few years ago, and it …

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Cheap Drone becomes Roadkill

Last month, I posted about the cheap drone I have and showed off some of the photos I’ve taken with it- clearly, I shouldn’t be able to get such good photos with such a cheap drone, but I have! I’ve also crashed the thing more times than I can count, and it’s come away mostly …

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SSB and Digital with… a QCX?

In January 2019, a ham named Guido, PE1NNZ posted to the QRP Labs groups.io group. The title of the post was “QCX-SSB: SSB with your QCX transceiver“.If you’re familiar with the QCX, then you’ll realize that this is a profound statement! The QCX is a high performance 5w CW transceiver. So how on earth did …

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Drone Photography On The Cheap: Worthwhile?

Long before cheap drones were a thing, in fact long before the quadcopters we call drones were a thing you could buy for a kid for $50, I was obsessed with the idea of taking aerial photographs. I didn’t really have any money to speak of- and by aerial photography standards, I still don’t. I’d …

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Goodbye QCX, Hello QCX+!

Today in the QRP Labs Groups.io group, Hans Summers announced an updated replacement for the QCX, which he’s calling the QCX+. It’ll be $6 more than the old QCX, but there’s some wonderful improvements. It’s designed specifically to fit a case a lot more easily, and the PCB itself is 2.2x bigger than before, which …

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Salvaging old CB’s for QRP Parts: Part 4

In the previous three installments, we tore down two old CB’s and an even older tube based CB linear amplifier. Those teardowns were a lot of fun and a great way to look at the way things used to be done before frequency synthesis took over. In this final CB teardown, we’re going to look …

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Salvaging old CB’s for QRP Parts: Part 3

In this third installment of Salvaging old CB’s for QRP Parts, we’re taking a slightly different turn. I still have another CB to tear into for the next post, but for this one, we’re changing it up a bit. Pictured below is a Mystery Box Thing that I purchased at a garage sale. It was …

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Salvaging old CB’s for QRP Parts: Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of “Salvaging old CB’s for QRP Parts”! In part 1 of this series, we described how we found a bin of CB radios and accessories at an estate sale some time back. The first radio we salvaged for parts was a Pace CB 145. The radio was disassembled to see …

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