[Today’s run: 11 miles with Boardtown Runners]
I have a few small ham radio projects going on:
1 – After getting my old HW-8 running again, I would really like to have some kind of light on the dial. It is kind of depressing to use a radio without one. I am working on a plan to use a bright blue LED and a piece of Lexan as a light pipe. The problem at the moment is attaching the LED to the Lexan. I used some cheap super glue and it didn’t work. (I think this cheap super glue is not much better than water.) Need to buy some better super glue.
2 – I need to get up the tower and put a new jumper line between the feedline and the TH-3 antenna (the big one for HF). When I was up doing VHF work earlier this summer I switched the TH-3 to use the nicer line I was abandoning when I moved the VHF antenna to the CATV hardline. It didn’t work. I think one of my connectors on the jumper is bad. I’d like to get that done before the November Sweepstakes.. way before.
3 – Frequency standard: I had to do some adjusting to the oscillator in my 10 MHZ GPS disciplined frequency standard. I’m suspicious that something isn’t right with the thing, mostly because the control voltage steadily creeps in only one direction. I’d expect it to go up and down. Maybe there is something wrong with my 10 Mhz HP ovenized oscillator module?
4 – VHF propagation monitor: Kind of sort of working. Needs to be fleshed out a bit with the alert mechanisms that I want as the end result of this project. The java-based soundcard modem seems to be working ok. I still have a noise source in the shack but I’m getting some signals through. I also need to increase my logging of the output so that I can go back and see if there have been openings (or finish the alerts!).
5 – HBR Receiver: no progress on that.
6 – National NCX-5: I saw an on-line article about how to make a small modification so that it doesn’t thump on key-down using CW. I’d like to implement that. Need to order a part.
Can’t think of anything else right now. Stuff seems to be working OK generally. I am looking forward to some cool winter mornings with DX coming in.