Meeting Attendees! ...
Joe N2CX |
George N2APB |
Joe "JJ" KC2VGL |
Frank N2PUU |
Bob K2UT |
Carl W2PTZ |
Dave WA2DJN |
Mike WA8BXN |
Ray K2ULR |
Nick K2JMK |
Jim N2ADR |
Bryan AA3WM |
Denis AD2DA |
Jim K2SZ |
Cory WA3UVV |
And the meeting itself ...
The photos below, with their individual captions, tell the whole story. Great time by all ... if we can keep this level of attendance and excitement going, monthly NJQRP meetings would definitely be happening again!
Overall we had 14 guys attend and many of us brought projects to talk about. Meeting there in the Brooklawn Community Center, we pull together three large round tables to sit at and spread out our goodies for viewing. We spend about 15-25 minutes at the beginning of each meeting just going around and looking closely at the various projects and catching up with friends. Coffee and a "meeex" of Munchkin donut holes were available for guys to munch on during the rest of the meeting. | |
Corey WA3UVV lead off with
some good discussion of his "retro computing". Bringing manuals of
his microcomputer boards of yesteryear (many of which he still has:
Apple I, II, KIM, COSMAC), he described a great source for these
projects today ... PDP-8, ELF, VT6 Terminal (www.SpareTimeGizmos.com),
ELF in an Altoids Tin (www.retrotechnology.com),
and KIM-1, Altair, IMSAI, Apple I, PockeTerm (www.brielcomputers.com). The board shown here is the Micro-KIM, available as a kit for about $100 from Briel Computers.
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Jim N2ADR lead a fascinating discussion on the Hermes single-board SDR coming soon from the HPSDR folks. This "direct sampling" SDR board represents the leading edge of ham computing with its fast 16-bit ADC. "Digitize right off the antenna!" | |
Nick (left) told us about
the QRPOMETER kit from Four State QRP Group. This nifty kit is a
QRP Power and SWR meter good to 8W ...
http://www.wa0itp.com/qrpom.html
Frank N3PUU (center) gave us a bit of an update on his Battery Monitor project, as presented at one of our previous meetings. Bryan AA3WM (right) is once again resurfacing from big work overload and tending to a growing family. |
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Once again we were honored to have Mike WA8BXN from Ohio drop in at our meeting! Mike brought along his Deluxe Tenna Dipper kit (http://www.qrpkits.com/deluxetennadipper.html) and demo'd its use. We really liked the enclosure and utility is offers for use in tuning one's antennas in the field. | |
Ray K2ULR brought along his
newest prize possession: the Elecraft KX3 QRP Transceiver.
Ray loves using it and has already been mod'ing it with a built-in
antenna tuner.
Ray also passed around his little LaunchPad from TI. This little microcontroller board MSP430 LaunchPad (MSP-EXP430G2) - Texas Instruments ) which only costs $4.30! Some of us are bound to build some projects around its MSP430 "QRP" controller. |
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Frank N2PUU showed us his
latest project, the Softrock Ensemble RXTX three-band transceiver (http://fivedash.com/) And you can get the classy enclosure at http://km5h.softrockradio.org/index.php?route=product/category&path=37 |
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George N2APB brought along a
number of his test & measurement projects, but we didn't get a chance to
overview many of them.
Two great data reference books for QRPers |
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The GPS project from the
Chat With The Designer weekly show (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43021514/CWTD/TeamspeakChat.html)
has been moving along great, based on the LEA-6T module from u-Blox.
Here you see the little GPS receiver plugged into a PC displaying the fabulously-detailed U-Center dashboard showing all the parameters coming down from the satellite. See http://www.u-blox.com/en/gps-modules/pvt-modules/lea-6-family.html
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Joe N2CX showing off his
prize measurement device, the AIM 4170C Antenna/Lab RF Analyzer from
Array Solutions (http://www.arraysolutions.com/Products/AIM4170.htm) Using it, Joe is able to characterize the performance of his latest creation: the N2CX Choke Balun. See the bottom of this CWTD page ... http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43021514/CWTD/Aug%207.html
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Bob K2UT
showed off his exciting find of a 30-ft collapsible graphite fishing
pole, great for portable QRP use with his Boy Scout troop ...
http://www.allfishingbuy.com/Fishing-Pole/Pole-A1-114-3-10009.htm It's a "super hard sensitive" model, so if you get different lengths you might want to see about the hardness. In the long run, the harder pole might be more brittle, but these are fishing poles, so anything designed to have a multi-pound fish at the end of a 33' pole is probably good enough for a temporary inverted vee :) These guys also have even longer poles! http://www.allfishingbuy.com/Fishing-Pole-12-13.htm Bob also showed us his latest high-tech paddle purchase! |
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Joe "JJ" KC2VGL gave us a
bunch of details and a demo of a plug-in module to an iPad that turns
the device into a VHF/UHF power meter and spectrum analyzer ...
http://www.oscium.com/products/wipry-combo-spectrum-analyzer-and-dynamic-power-meter
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Dave WA2DJN showed us his version of the QRPOMETER (mentioned above), as well as his recent excitement about tube-based QRP radios. He's currently building up a 6AQ5 VFO and Regen, following along the path of a prolific YouTube instruction line from WU2D.
If interested in some good demo videos of
these simple tube Rx and Tx projects, google “WU2D”, or see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAUQVO5kiGw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
and follow his other video links for more.] |