Hamfest News
Due to Logistical issues, the Palms West ARC Hamfest will not be held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We do not have a facility to hold the event, but we are in communication with an organization that may grant the use of its facility, possibly in the spring. We may have another picnic around the time of the Thanksgiving holiday. Please stay in communication with us for further details.
Back in 2010, I became interested in legal micropower broadcasting under the FCC Part 15 regulations, and assembled an SSTRAN AMT3000 kit transmitter for the AM broadcast band. I had limited success with an outdoor installation, but it worked well for “broadcasting” around the house. I later graduated to an outdoor installation with a Hamilton […] [...]
Or “The One-Transistor Regen That Turned Into A Two-Transistor Regen” with thanks to G3XBM and N0WVA. (Note – if reading this post on a computer, you can click on any of the images for a slightly larger version.) About 10 years ago, Doug N0WVA told me about an impressive little regen he had built with […] [...]
No new construction projects here, I’m afraid, and none planned for the foreseeable future, though I have made some exciting and worthy acquisitions. A couple of years ago, I was looking for a vintage high impedance headset to use with crystal sets. For regular use, I found a set of Baldwins (the famed “Baldies”) and […] [...]
Recently, I built a simple little TRF receiver for the AM broadcast band using a TA7642, a modern equivalent for a chip that was quite popular with electronics homebrewers in the 70’s and 80’s. The ZN414 was a device made by the British semiconductor company Ferranti. Housed in a metal TO-18 can with three leads, […] [...]
In the previous post, I described my recent build of a very simple little TRF receiver for the AM broadcast band. It happened as the result of a month or two spent with much more complex projects, namely a scratch-build of the receiver section of a Norcal 2N2/20, and a kit build of a complete […] [...]
My last project, a Norcal 2N2/20 kit build, which also involved a partial scratch-build of the same circuit, rather took it out of me. As a result, I’ve been revisiting some of the circuits I built in my pre-teen years. Giving myself permission to play around with simple circuits is really fun, as well as […] [...]
Note – this is a rather long and wordy post, with a lot of pictures. Perhaps surprisingly, after 16 years, there are still some unbuilt Norcal 2N2/XX kits floating around in the wild. If you have one, or are hoping to aqcuire one, and are interested in suggested and recommended minor mods and parts substitutions, […] [...]
My continued apologies to long-term blog readers, most of whom are probably more interested in posts detailing my builds of QRP ham radio projects. This will probably be my last post on micropower Part 15 broadcasting for a while, as my interests have shifted back towards QRP ham radio. I just completed a rather nifty […] [...]
I first discovered the world of legal micro-broadcasting back in 2010. The AM broadcast band was my focus, as the regulations in the US for that band are more generous than those which cover the FM broadcast band. My first transmitter was an SSTRAN AMT3000. It worked well throughout the house, but didn’t radiate much […] [...]
14 years ago (where does the time go?) I was looking for a way to broadcast very locally, to my neighborhood, legally. The operative word was legally and, somehow, I discovered the world of Part 15 broadcasting on the AM broadcast band. FCC regulations under Part 15 allow for a wide variety of unlicensed devices […] [...]