Category: homebrew

Dabbling in Circuit Art: The LM386 Spider

Last month I built the DC40 receiver (and wrote a giant series on it: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. And somewhat unofficially Here!) and at the same time, Hackaday.com posted their Circuit Sculpture contest. Would it be possible for me to combine projects, and submit the DC40 as a circuit sculpture of some …

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KI7MNW’s Homebrew QRP Transceiver

Cameron Tribe, KI7MNW recently posted his homebrew QRP transceiver on the Amateur QRP Radio group on Facebook. It’s completely scratch built and borrows design elements from several sources including the BITX40. Follow all the way to the bottom for a picture gallery, schematics, and source articles. Tonight I finished my homebrew 40m QRP transceiver. I’ve …

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Building a Direct Conversion Receiver: Part 3

In the first installment, we talked about choosing a Direct Conversion receiver design to build and getting started with the most basic parts. Part 2 dove into Manhattan construction and building the amplification stages. For this third installment, we’re going to discuss the functions of the Diode Ring Mixer, Band Pass Filter, and VFO stages. …

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Building QRP Labs Band Pass Filters: 3 Tips you should know!

QRP Labs Band Pass Filters are these wonderful little kits that largely take all the question of building a filter. They use a proven design, the kit includes the inductors and wires, and the build instructions are top notch.  One thing I love about the QRP Labs Band Pass (and Low Pass) filter kits is that …

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Building a Direct Conversion Receiver: Part 2

In the first installment of this series, we discussed why we’re building a Direct Conversion receiver and talked about some basic ideas. In this installment, we explore what it takes to make the leap from a printed schematic to something physical that works. Follow along! Schematic Semantics The DC40 was originally designed by Ashhar Farhan …

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Building a Direct Conversion Receiver: Part 1

QRP Labs VFO, bare PCB with just the audio amplifier stage and a power strip to the left side of the board.

In this series of posts I’m going to take you on a journey. We’re going to explore the Direct Conversion receiver together, and I’m going to show you every bit of the journey that I can. Let’s get started! Why build a Direct Conversion receiver? When I restarted in ham radio in December 2016, it …

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20M Inverted V with Lightweight Dipole Center

One of the many joys of being a ham radio operator is building antennas. I’ve covered the L-Match tuner and long wire antenna in the past, and while it’s a great way to get on the air, a resonant antenna is always nice- if you have the room for it. When you’ve only got 5w …

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