HB2HB: Contact on 40 meters with W0PWE

I got on 40SSB this evening and called CQ with my BITX DIGI-Tia.  Hooray!  Jerry W0PWE answered me with HIS 40 Meter DIGI-TIA.  His is still Al Fresco style.  Very nice.  We add this to the homebrew to homebrew scorecard.  Thanks Jerry!

Jerry's rig:

VU2XE's BITX40 (with a cool CAD box)

A year or so ago Pete and I encouraged Kiran VU2XE to try the BITX.  He followed through, on our suggestion and went a step further, using CAD to design a box for the BITX.  I will try to post a link to Kiran's CAD files on the BITXHACKS blog.  

Kiran writes:

Hi Bill and Pete,

It is almost year since you seeded idea about the BITX. I am still a listener of your podcast.

After finishing my RF amplifier project late last year, I was thinking of few projects and BITX was on the top of the list. I ordered and received a very beautiful BITX40 kit with Arduino, I got it recently. I also designed a simple case for it using CAD software. It can be used by anyone -- just go to your local laser/CNC shop to get it cut in Aluminum.  I just thought of sharing the excitement with you.  This rig and it sounds awesomely good :)

Attached are some snaps and design files (I am no expert in CAD etc. it is my first attempt to learn and build)

Happy projects and 73s

Kiran VU2XE 

Peter Parker VK3YE on Vintage Gear (in his new book!)

Homebrew Hero Peter Parker has a new book on the market.   I was really taken by his description of the joys of restoring older gear.  Peter really nails it.   Here is an excerpt:

Vintage Equipment

     The collection, restoration and use of historical equipment is another movement in amateur radio.  The musty smell of warming dust, the heavy clunk of rotary switches and the velvet smoothness of precision tuning drives are joys of every use.
     Such sensuality is absent from modern plastic-fronted, wobbly-knobbed transceivers.  Old rig cabinets felt they had something in them.  A kick would hurt you more than them.  And etched panel markings confirmed they were built to last.
    Unlike today’s dainty push buttons with stunted travel and disembodied beep, toggle switches showed you where they stood.  Weight, life and play made adjusting controls for nulls and peaks (as often required) both a pleasure and occasional frustration.  Even if only as mechanical backlash on a bad tuning dial, it was as if the equipment was telling you something, like a ridden horse does through its reins.  Not like newer gear’s lack of tactility which is like a ‘dead fish’ handshake, all take and no give.
    There are psychic as well as physical joys.  The thrill of bringing neglected or dead equipment to life drives many.  It’s an underestimated skill.  You start with nothing and almost anything done represents progress when building from scratch.  Whereas with a repair it is very easy to render something that’s 80% good completely useless with a careless drop or slip.

More about ‘Getting back into Amateur Radio’ is at
http://home.alphalink.com.au/~parkerp/gettingback.htm 
& the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4ktP5K4x-I

Back from the Raspberry Pi SDR Brink

Earlier this week I shocked Pete Juliano by telling him that I was taking a break from my normal analog, discrete component, no-chips mode of construction so that I could put together a Raspberry Pi-based SDR receiver.  Even from 3000 miles away, his astonishment was clearly perceptible. He seemed briefly disoriented by it.  I'm sure some of you may have a similar reaction.  

I'd been lured in by that video of the Raspberry Pi RTL-SDR receiver with the very cool  touch screen display.  It has a waterfall!  And a touch screen! How could I resist?

I went to Amazon, but there I discovered that that attractive display is not exactly cheap. And maybe I'd need a new Raspberry Pi.  At this point, in search of economy and convenience, I began rummaging through my digital junk box.  There I found a Rasp Pi Model B.  And an old computer monitor.  This will be easy, I thought.  Just get some SDR code into that Pi, hook up the RTL-SDR dongle and Bob's my uncle, right? 

Not so fast.  I quickly began to run into daunting digital obstacles. Sure, the Raspberry Pi fired right up and filled the computer display with lines of code.  But it was all Linux.  Yuck.  Sorry Linux fans, but for some of us mere mortals,  Linux is a weird opaque world in which every little thing is somehow a lot harder.

I also began to suspect that my 2013 Model B might be sort of a Model T in the Rasp Pi world.  It might not be up to the computing task.

And finally, as I poked around the internet, I began to conclude that the Raspberry Pi software for SDR is not quite done yet.  All the sites seemed to have the word "experimental" in there.  And lots of "I'm pulling my hair out" comments Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe we just need to give this more time.

Let me ask the distinguished group some questions:

Is my Model B really useless for SDR purposes, even if I don't need all the bells and whistles?

Is there an SDR program that can be easily placed in a Raspberry Pi by someone who has NOT mastered the mysteries of Linux? 

For now, I have cleared the raspberries from the bench and am back to working on HDR stuff. 

New Posts to BITX HACKS

Don't miss the new posts on the BITX HACKS blog.  There are some great ideas from Don ND6T and some wonderful tribal knowledge from Pete N6QW.

http://bitxhacks.blogspot.com/