Propagation JO29 --> JO22

Most interesting! Two Norwegian stations, LA5GOA and LA9BEA (neighbors), running MEPTs from JO29.

The locations of the two stations, as googled, are:
LA5GOA in JO29OI
LA9BEA in JO29OG
Steen Erik wrote on the KnightsQRSS list "LA5GOA and LA9BEA live about 15km apart on the island Karmøy on the west coast of Norway". Seen from my QTH, both stations share the same heading and hence, LA9BEA is by 15km closer to my location than LA5GOA.

And here comes the interesting part, not surprising however. Both transmitters create comparable field strengths in my humble grabber (located in JO22DA).
The following spectra were received by my 30m grabber setup: 30m-DCTL & subharmonic direct-conversion receiver. Note, the receiver does not employ AGC circuitry.
Please observe the different field strengths caused by the two friends and enjoy our ionosphere in action!

Just an Idea

From VHF and UHF operations we know to use preamps at the antenna feedpoint as to improve SNR. SHF and EHF amateur radio operation is usually done by having the transverter at the antenna's feedpoint, since losses in the transmission line would eat up the signals completely...

So, what's the idea? Well, in QRSS, we also hunt for the best possible SNR. So, why not moving half or more of a QRSS station's circuitry to the antenna?
Half? Yes, I would prefer/advice to have frequency determining blocks, i.e. oscillators, in a controlled environment, e.g. the shack.

DC-Feed
The basic trick on all of the following would be feeding DC from the shack to the device at the antenna, whatever the device will be. Feeding is done in the well known way for active aerial or mast-head preamps.

TX
Easy things first, lets have a look at transmitters. The only bit that needs to be at the antenna feedpoint would be the final amplifier. The only thing to watch out for would be the Ohmic loss of the transmission line, since the final stage will require some current. If one cares about the voltage which the final is driven from, one should take this transmission line DC resistance into consideration.

RX
Reception is somewhat more challenging. Why do it in the first place? A preamp could do that. Yes, it could. However, some designs (e.g. w/ the NE612) do not really need pre-amplification...
Here's a look at the different cases:

Direct Conversion
In this case, the LO would be in the shack, and the whole rest of the receiver remote at the antenna location. It should not pose any problem to combine/split LO-RF, RX-AF and DC. However, the supply DC can carry mains hum residuals. A decent high-pass will be necessary before the AF can be fed into any sound-card.


Supersonic-Heterodyne (Superhet)
In such a scenario, front-end, mixer and IF filter (xtal-ladder) would be distal. LO, BFO, product detector and AF-amp would proximal. It is conceivable/advisable to add a second xtal-ladder to split IF and BFO frequencies. The downside would be the more complex frequency splitting at the distal part. A crystal filter would come handy here, and therefore, a "cheap crystal combination" would be recommendable for such a design, however tempting a DDS design would be.


RX&TX
Now to the tricky stuff... RX/TX-toggle could possibly done by polarity reversal, e.g. by diodes and relays.
I would like to leave it to your imagination what would be possible...

Conclusions
This may not be necessary to think about at all...
However, in case of reception, having all the low-noise stuff at the distal location, one may consider using cheap twin lead cable to connect the remote head with the shack.
For transmission, the obvious advantage would be that the final could be matched to TX-aerial, whatever it may be in balance and/or impedance.

JUMA-RX1 kit arrived

Unboxing of a kit... I would usually not make any noises about. However, this time it seems appropriate to share this experience with you.

SRAT sent the kit in a solid cardboard box with more than sufficient padding. I received an email the day the kit was shipped, with tracking info! The shipment was tagged "1st class - PRIORITY" and "RECOMMANDÉ". I am impressed!

The 1st class treatment continues inside the box, carrying a bag containing a TEKO casing. The kit itself is contained inside the TEKO casing:

JUMA-RX1 receiver kit

Note, the kit supplies you with everything you could possibly require... even rubber pads.

JUMA-RX1 possible mod

To the time of writing this post., my JUMA-RX1 kit is still waiting with postal services. Will be pick the kit up tomorrow....

Time to look into some possible modifications. Why, you may ask, why the hack modify a well thought through design? Vy vy simple, the receiver, due to the simplicity of the design, is limited to bands 40m and lower, i.e. 100kHz to 7.5MHz.

So, what is that constraint all about? The design uses a 16F819 as controller. This PIC is limited to a 20MHz clock frequency. The clever bit of OH2NLT's design is to use the 16F819's clock for the AD9833 DDS too. This however limits the DDS output frequency. One possibility would be to have the DDS running at another clock frequency. Such a modification would however require reprogramming of the firmware, in order to adapt to the new DDS clock. Possible, ok, but somewhat intensive.

OH7SV designed a direct conversion receiver with an active switching mixer. Absolutely nothing wrong with this design. If we sacrifice the 136kHz band, we could gain the 30m and 20m bands by doubling the LO. The frequency coverage will move from 100kHz-7.5MHz to 200kHz-15MHz.
There is one downside to this game, the LO frequency steps are also doubled. The 10Hz minimal steps would result in 20Hz QRG change... also frequency readout will have to be doubled to determine the QRG.

Here would be my preferred solution: introduce a second front-end having a low-pass filter, a subharmonic mixer and a low noise op-amp AF preamp. A dual switch toggles the antenna input and the preamp output between the original and the additional circuits. Extracting signal to the subharmonic mixer may require an additional adjustable driver.
Such a mod will preserve 136kHz operation and better fine tuning in direct conversion mode and offer improved performance and wider coverage in subharmonic mode.

Should there be no need for 136kHz and/or 10Hz steps, the whole front-end could be modified easily by changing low-pass filter components and adding a frequency doubler between the DDS and the RX boards.
In case subharmonic advantages are on the wish-list, the MUX-mixer could be replaced by a RA3AAE-mixer (don't forget the low-pass!). In this case the differential preamp should be modified too.

I am sure that even more possibilities would be obvious to the skilled artisan.

Stay tune for practical experience, as soon as I picked up and built the kit.

Grabber Viewer Gadget

This is actually a little bit off topic. For various reasons, I decided to buy a tablet gadget. Several options were thought through:

iPad: too big, too expensive, no USB, no memory card
Galaxy Tab: GPS, too expensive
Archos 5: 160GB HDD, 3G, GPS, screen too small
Archos 70: 250GB HDD, no memory card, sold out :-(
Archos 7: cheap, just 8GB storage, nevertheless: bought

Yes, initially, I opted for the Archos 70, in particular for its 250GB HDD. However, the Archos 70 was sold out... Moreover, the Archos 70 carries ballast I don't need, such as a webcam and BlueTooth.

So, there we go, the Archos 7 home tablet it is (for the time being). Why am I posting this on my RF blog anyway? Very simply said. This gadget allows me to observe grabbers conveniently when being in reach of an accessible WLAN. The Android 2.1 GUI allows for putting URLs on a virtual desktop for easy access. Hold the device vertically, i2NDT's compendium fits perfectly on the 7in screen, hold it horizontally, an individual grabber spectrum will fill the screen for comfortable observation.

The Archos 7 home tablet is big enough as to not being fiddly to operate (virtual keyboard size), yet small enough to carry about.

You don't always get what you want, but you do get what you need!

That at least was the motto of my ex. Very respectfully I would like to point out that we are not together anymore for a reason, we are still friends however!

The same applies to the PFR-3 paddles... initially I wanted those, since they were fitting the PFR-3. A week after I ordered, I learned about Jerry's (W5JH) paddles, which equally attach to the PFR-3. However, having ordered the original paddles, I postponed any additional order.
Until I learned (two months after ordering) that I wont get any PFR-3 paddles...

Jerry's kit comes with two beautiful black anodized aluminum plates and three brass bars. Those five parts are machined and finished to the highest quality standard! Believe me, the manufacture of those parts is really really good!
The kit practically built itself!

So, I didn't get what I initially wanted... however, regarding the rock solid quality of Jerry's paddles, I got what I needed!

NVIS QRSS

This could be a fun one to do: dual band NVIS QRSS.

Not sure what NVIS is? Please have a "google" to find out. There is a lot of excellent documentation available.
The only bit of info about NVIS I would like to point out in the post would be the fact that the 40m band is good during the average day and the 80m band is good for the average night. Running both in parallel could show some interesting daytime nighttime transitions.

Due to the harmonic nature of the 80m and 40m bands the easiest approach for a transmitter design would be to build an oscillator for either band and generate the other frequency by division or doubling. The downside here: shifts and offsets would also be divided or doubled.

A receiver also could make use of a single local oscillator. Here the most simple design would be a regular direct conversion mixer for 80m and a subharmonic direct conversion mixer for 40m. The respective audio frequencies could be fed into one single stereo sound card using left and right channels.

Frequency-wise, there are two obvious possibilities.  Both have pros and cons:

1. 3500400Hz & 7000800Hz
2. 3579545Hz & 7159090Hz

The first option will make this sort of QRSS activity visible in grabbers as presently operated, it is however, due to the price of the crsytals more expensive than the second option.
The second option uses frequencies for which very inexpensive crystals are available, the big pro on the second option would be that is will enable many more hams to operate a transmitter legally (the ole novice story).

By now, you may have asked yourself why crystals still play a role here. Well, not so much for the transmitter, although they make nice filters for oscillators using digital gates. For a possible receiver those crystals would make ideal narrow front-end side-band filters, which are in particular important when operating in the middle of a busy band.

Want something more complicated?
What about a "superhet" design? With center (intermediate) frequency of 5.250800MHz and a 1.750MHz local oscillator the mixing products would be 3500800Hz and 7000800Hz. When shifting the intermediate frequency, both the 80m and the 40m frequencies will shift by the equal amount in the same direction, that's kinda cool!
Now to the tricky business how frequencies could be generated. Lets start with the easy one. 1.75MHz is subharmonic to 3.5, 7.0 and 14.0MHz. The first two call for trouble since those are too close to the final operating frequencies (*). But what about 14.0MHz? Crystals and even oscillators are available for this one! A division by 8 (ripple counter) will result in a very stable 1.75MHz local oscillator.
And here is the challenge: 5.250800MHz. There is a crystal for 5200kHz, but a 50kHz pull is too much and grinding is a tricky business. There may be a 10.5MHz crystal available, somewhere... As a last resort, a DDS would possibly do a superb job. This however would also be the most expensive solution.
(*) Problem for the TX, solution for the RX, subharmonic to 80 and 40 and the same time!

Want something even more complicated? No problem! That one is so overcomplicated, that is should rather be seen as experiment in thought. What about SDR? Take a 10m QRP crystal (28.060MHz). This frequency is perfect for a 40m SDR, center frequency: 7.015MHz. A quadrature local oscillator can be derive by a division by 2, resulting in a 14.030MHz local frequency and a 3.5075MHz SDR center frequency. For reception, 2 stereo channels are needed and to provide I and Q for both bands. TX in such a case could be done by either individual audio frequency generators w/ 90 phase shift networks or in a way similar to the LO, with a 56.9kHz generator.
As I said, the SDR is somewhat hypothetical, not practical in any way....

The superhet TX design presently appears to be favorable, together with a subharmonic direct conversion receiver for 80 (1.75x2) and 40 (1.75x4).

4MHz - the Magic QRSS I.F.

Although the QRSS-community seems not to be as technical as it used to be, some thoughts about the matter from my side.

Some OM, again I am writing about novice/foundation/newcomer-lis, may not be allowed the lower band edge. But still, most activity takes place at those spots.

I asked myself, if I could find crystals to suite both needs. You will find some combis for one or the other option on this blog.

Meanwhile, I believe that 4.000MHz is the ideal I.F. for QRSS. Here's what can be done (more or less easily):

600m 4.5025MHz-4.000MHz=(27.015/6)MHz-4.000MHz=502.5kHz
The trick here, use a CB transmit (overtone) crystal for 27.015MHz (5T) and operate it a its fundamental, i.e. 9.005MHz. A division by 2 (flip flop) will end up at 4.5025MHz. A VXO at 9MHz may be pullable by a few kHz, hence, we may be able to cover a substantial portion of the present 600m hamradio band.
Should a future allocation be somewhat higher, there are many other CB-TX-XTALS available.
Should a future allocation be somewhat lower, there are many CB-RX-XTALS available.

NAVTEX 4.5175MHz-4.000MHz=(27.105/6)MHz-4.000MHz=517.5kHz
Essentially the same as above... the crystal being a 12T. For those who are not aware, there is maritime navigational (and weather) information transmitted on 600m, to be precise, 518kHz (international frequency) in FEC.
NAVTEX also knows a local frequency, which is 490kHz. This frequency is reached with a 39R (26.940MHz) xtal.

80m 4.000MHz-500kHz=3.500Mhz
500kHz can easily be generated from a 4MHz signal by dividing the latter by 8 (ripple counter). Running a 4MHz Pierce oscillator, the generated frequency will be above the 4MHz series frequency. Assume we generated a frequency of 4001kHz, 1/8 would be 500.125kHz, resulting in a mixed QRG of 3500.875kHz (TX).
For RX, a tweaked (fine tuned) L.O. can be used as B.F.O. to provide a reasonable beat for reception.

40m 4.000MHz+3.000MHz=7.000MHz
That would be the lower band edge solution... further comments here... however, there are better options!

40m 11.000MHz-4.000MHz=7.000MHz
Again the lower band edge, however, this is subtractive, therefore, temperature drifts will not add up but rather cancel (or at least reduce another).

40m 11.059MHz-4.000MHz=7.059MHz
This QRG is open to novice/foundation/newcomer-license holders! Temperature drifts will not add up but rather cancel (or at least reduce another). The frequency is at the upper edge of the 40m data segment, I believe, it is an ideal playground for testing all sorts of modes.

30m 4.000MHz+6.144MHz=10.144MHz
The classical 30m QRSS frequency is in close range. A local oscillator will have to generate a frequency of 6.139Mhz, which is reachable by either pulling of penning of a 6.144MHz standard crystal.

20m 4.000MHz+10.000MHz=14.000MHz
This is a no-brain-er! Just run a 10.0MHz LO.

20m 18.000MHz-4.000MHz=14.000MHz
This is a no-brain-er having improved temperature behavior... subtractive...

17m 4.000MHz+14.080MHz=4.000MHz+2x7.040MHz=18.080MHz
Here, the local oscillator would be sub-harmonic. 7.040MHz is just one example of many possibilities opened by crystals available for the 40m ham-radio band.

15m 25.000MHz-4.000MHz=21.000MHz
This again is a no-brain-er having improved temperature behavior... subtractive...

10m 4.000MHz+24.000MHz=28.000MHz
This is a no-brain-er...


10m 4.000MHz+24.000MHz=4.000MHz+2x12.000MHz=28.000MHz
Subharmonic.


Please feel free to add some ideas as a comment!

The JUMA-RX1 a DDS Controlled Grabber Receiver

Yep, this time it's Finnish, guys. JUMA, I guess that is short for JUha (OH2NLT) and MAtti (OH7SV), sells some nice DDS kits. I found them when looking for 136kHz and 500kHz transmitters.

JUMA also offers shortwave kits. I figure, the RX1 kit makes a very nice grabber receiver, covering the 2.2km, 600m, 160m, 80m and 40m bands by means of a DDS VFO.
The rest of the receiver is old skool direct conversion, so using there is no side-band rejection. Not a great deal for 3500800Hz or 7000800Hz, since, not much signal is to be expected below our bands.
The QRSS range in the 2.2km, 600m or 160m bands are at frequencies where the other, i.e. lower, side-band can be occupied. Filtering for those bands will be a necessity. For the 160m band one may consider building a crystal front-end filter for the QRSS frequency. For 2.2km and 600m, this would certainly not do. Not all is lost for LF and MF, since preferred aerials (magnetic loops and frames) are ideally very narrow-band and will, if tuned right, help to at least reduce the lower side-band.
Additionally, filters can be build for the 80m color burst frequency, 40m WSPR and for any other frequency for which crystals are available.

The RX1 kit is all SMD, this could be seen as a hinder by some builders. Personally, I slowly get used to the tiny parts. With a proper PCB holder, a special SMT soldering iron and respective 0.5mm solder SMT is not much harder than regular through hole electronics. SMT has even got advantages, e.g. no excess leads need to be trimmed.

The DDS and the housing alone would justify the expenses of the kit, the DC-RX is essentially for free. Moreover, all mechanical bits and pieces are supplied.
With JUMA even offering the source-code of the firmware for download, which is even written in C, I figure one could easily modify the hardware to a superhet (e.g. 455kHz IF) and program an offset into the firmware.
A possible mod, in my view, could be to have the receiver PCB operated at 455kHz, with a decent IF-filter in place of the 40m low-pass. The DDS-VFO will, in such a scenario, serve an additional front-end, whatever it will be...

28322 Beacon Net Receiver

With the prospect of the upcoming activity in the present solar cycle, it is about time to think of a receiver for the (Italian) 28322(kHz) beacon network.
Due to the nature of those transmitters, the frequency range we want to be looking at is something like 3kHz, maybe 4kHz, i.e. 28320 to 28324kHz.


Now that the task is defined, let's move on and look at the obvious design involving inexpensive parts.

The xx322kHz frequency immediately makes me think of 14.318MHz crystals to form a filter for the intermediate frequency.

With an intermediate frequency of 14.318MHz, a local oscillator should create a frequency of 14.00xMHz. A local oscillator that close to the intermediate frequency will however put unnecessary strain on the IF-xtal-filter and even could end up clogging up a/the IF amplifier. I further believe that LO and BFO being so close is not such a good idea.
Solution to said problems: a local oscillator at 7.00xMHz (crystal easily available) hooked up to a subharmonic first mixer (pair of anti-parallel diodes). The intermediate frequency stage would be blind to 7.0MHz LO stray.

With the mixing all sorted, the next thoughts need to be spent on filter design. A bandwidth of 3, maybe 4kHz, makes a ladder filter a hard task, in particular since such a ladder filter would require quite some amount of poles. Even being harder to make, I figure a lattice filter would be the best option here. Lattice filters however require pairs of matched crystals being a some kHz apart. That is where the work sits in. One pair of 14.318MHz xtals can be selected by measuring/matching the series frequency of stock xtals. The other pair will have be to created by penning down two xtals to the exact same frequency.

For the BFO and the product detector the most obvious choice would be the NE612, just the way one would use it anyway.


Bored of QRSS?
There could be another use for the setup: an SSB phone RX, TX or even TRX. The important bit here, the bandwidth of the crystal filter should be around 2.4kHz. Such a bandwidth is easily available with a ladder filter, however, a lattice filter would give a better response.
Very obviously having a single channel SSB radio at a frequency where beacons beep around the clock is not the best of ideas. So, the LO will have to employ a different frequency. Luckily, many crystals are available for frequencies in the 40m band, e.g. 7030kHz, 7040kHz etc., hence, channelized or VXOed rig is no problem at all. Taking things further, a VFO could be on the wish list. And there is just a perfect option. The famous NE612 (SA612,NE602,SA602) can be configured to operate as a frequency doubling ceramic resonator oscillator. With a pulled down 3.58MHz ceramic resonator (avoid 3.58MHz!), a good portion of the 10m SSB range will be available.

At this place, I would like to thank Jan (PA9QV/OZ9QV) for triggering my thoughts about a 10m upper side-band design with the simple question "do you know a combination for 28322?" :-))