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Live! Hey, good evening, everyone. It's time
for ham talk live episode number 96 a new year
and new kits with Joe k0 neb Recorded live on
Thursday, January 4th 2018 I'm your host Neil
rap wb9 vpg Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of ham talk lives night. We're joined by our
friend Joe Eisenberg K0NEB and we'll take your
calls live in just a few minutes and last week
Bernie McClennie W3UR from the Daily DX was here
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We're also over on YouTube if that's better for
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I'll be back with Joe right after this word from
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They'll be in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Say that five
times fast. That's Waukesha, Joe tells me in
my ear. It's on the 6th, so that's coming up
on Saturday. And then they'll be doing the Florida
sweep they'll be at the UCF University of Central
Florida show at Orlando on January 13th and then
January 19th and 20th and let me bring Joe in
here because Joe told me some some extra information
here January 19th and 20th Fort Myers, Florida
and Our guest tonight Joe will be there too.
Yep Even if I'm not speaking, I'm not sure if
I am, but I will definitely be there both days
at the Hamfest in Fort Myers, right across from
Cape Coral where my brother lives, so making
kind of a weekend and week out of it. So you
can see Joe and Scott and Jill from Tower Electronics,
or you can give them a call at 920. 435 -2973
or you can visit them online at pl -259 .com
tell them you heard it on HamTalk Live and and
tell them you know Joe Eisenberg and maybe they'll
they'll give you like they'll charge you double
or something double or triple and I know Joe
uses a lot of uh their stuff for the kit building,
so that'll be a good chance for you to pick up
some of those items there as well. Well, speaking
of Joe, let's get right to it here. Joe Eisenberg,
KZeroNEB, is from Lincoln, Nebraska and is well
known for his kit building expertise. He's also
known for his picture shows of Hamvention. and
he is the longtime kit building editor at CQ
Magazine and often makes presentations and offers
kit builds at HamFest conventions and club meetings.
Joe started out in ham radio at a very early
age and has been licensed since 1969 and a lot
of people know him from Dayton because of his
Dr. Seuss hat and we're even going to talk about
the Dr. Seuss hat. There's breaking news. Dr.
Seuss Hatland. So we'll talk about that in a
little bit. So Joe, officially welcome. Well
thank you Neil and it's good to talk to you again.
Yep, we'd like to have Joe on here every few
months to tell us about some kits that are coming
out. So let's start off with that. What's new
out there in Kitland? Well, We're going to talk
about one real quickly. This comes from qrpguys
.com. This little kit is about a two inch square
and it was designed by KD1JV. who is known for
his melt solder kits. This one is really designed
that a beginning kit builder can probably put
it together in about an hour. A more experienced
builder, like you and myself, probably maybe
20, 30 minutes. And what it is, is it's a code
practice oscillator. And you say, well, there's
a zillion of those out, not one like this. This
one has an LED that flashes. It has a volume
control for your headset volume, very loud audio
output, and it will accommodate a straight key
or a paddle. So it will be a keyer. And you can
adjust the speed up and down. And it has another
function. If you push this one button, it will
start sending code to you. and so you can practice
your code with it. It runs on a single CR2032
battery, which is not included in the kit, but
very common, available at local drugstores and
so forth, because it's the same battery as in
a lot of automotive remote controls. The kit
puts together real quickly and is a great asset
if you want to train for CW. You want to learn
the code at whatever speed you want. It will
do that. Very easy build, very nice first time
kit. And it's got all the instructions printed
on the front and the back of the board. So all
you got to have is that flipped over and you
can read all the different functions that it
does. Very easy to put together. Now, QRP Guys
also sells a kit called the Lydia CW, Single
Side Band Receiver. and it has a digital dial
option so that you have a full digital display
for your 40 meter receiver. Now actually they
do give you the modifications to put this on
several different bands so it doesn't necessarily
have to be on 40. They do tell you the different
components that you do have to replace in case
you do it. It has a 10 turn pot so it makes it
very easy to tune. Nice receiver, runs on 12
volts. and has an RF gain control, a CW sideband
bandwidth switch for the receiver, an on -off
switch, and a simple volume and tuning control
and a five -digit digital display. Also relatively
easy to put together, but I would say you're
going to spend at least a whole afternoon building
this one because it has a toroid and the digital
display is a separate kit. If we go back to the
code oscillator, that thing was $15 for this
40 meter receiver, which is very small, fits
in your hand very nicely. It is $35 and the digital
display option is $15. So it's not gonna break
the bank to build this nice little receiver.
Now finally, If you look at your CQ magazine
from November and those of you who miss getting
it in the mail you can download that free by
going to the CQ website and click on the news
story and does have links so you can download
the November and December issues. And in the
November issue I introduced the idea of the Harbach
kits and these kits are there to repair not only
the Heath kit amplifiers but Drake's swans, all
sorts of different radios. You can rebuild your
power supplies and other vital components from
the HardBot kits. Now, the HeathKid SB200, as
you know, is a very, very popular amplifier.
And it has a problem that power supplies after
a while start smoking. And of course, we don't
allow smoking, Neil. And when the magic smoke
leaves, it doesn't work anymore. And I was fortunate
to pay about $100 for this amplifier used at
a local flea market. And what struck me about
it is it just didn't have any scratches or dents
or any marks in the paint. I mean, it looked
like brand new. The meter was shiny and everything,
and I thought, well, this looks like it's been
used, but... and had some dust and dirt in it
and so forth, but it looked like it was functional.
So when I brought it home, I plugged it in and
sure enough, I see the wisp of smoke coming out
of it after I let the tubes warm up for a bit.
But I looked and the high voltage was still holding
at about nominal 2 ,300 volts. So I turned it
off obviously when I saw the smoke and I looked
it up and it said, hey, there's these kits out
there that you can... use to repair this amplifier.
And if you'll see my January article in CQ Magazine,
you'll see the pictures of the power supply board,
which is the first one of the three boards I
got from Harbach and assembled. And I have to
thank Harbach Electronics for sending me these
boards to work with, and I found these to be
very easy to assemble, absolutely easy to assemble,
and it makes such a huge improvement in this
amplifier. It's hard to imagine. The capacitors
are very tall in the old board and they're very
short in the new one. There's fewer diodes because
diodes in the last 50 years have improved immensely.
I put together the power supply first, and then
I removed the old one and put the new one in
as per his instructions. And then the two other
boards I did, one... is kind of an inrush protection.
And what it does is it switches in a couple of
load resistors in series with the power lead
for about a half a second to a second when the
power is first applied to the amplifier. And
what this does is it protects your transformer
and your filaments and so forth. And it's out
of the circuit, like I said, within about a second
of turning that amplifier on. So it's pretty
sweet. The other board that I did includes an
opto isolator and switching transistor and what
that is used for is it changes the relay voltage
because that amplifier required you to switch
130 volts DC. And radios back in the 60s and
70s had no trouble taking care of that, but your
new solid state radios have these tiny little
relays or solid state switches that don't do
a real good job with 130 volts. So this cuts
it down to about a volt, volt and a half, and
very, very low current. And the good thing about
this is there are external adapter kits that
perform the same function. But this is built
into the amplifier, so in case I took it to somebody
else's station that had some kind of outside
relay switching, it doesn't care. You can switch
the low voltage with the relay just as easy as
you can the high. But the amplifier will only
require the low voltage switching. So running
about 78 watts, I think it was, on a bird going
into it, I was able to get about 700 watts DC
out. So of sine wave CW so it works great. I
did put in new tubes I got my tubes from DX engineering
and their tubes are so well matched that you
do not need to get a matched pair You do not
need to balance them or anything else. So I highly
recommend the very heavy -duty 572 be tubes that
DX engineering Puts out And I think they cost
me like 70 some dollars each. So a good investment,
especially if you're putting in all this other
stuff in there, you don't want to have tubes
that might accidentally have a grid short or
something. Although the tubes that were in there
did not seem to misbehave for the time period
I had them. So I did save them carefully. So
I do have a spare set of tubes. Well, it never
hurts to have a spare set of tubes. Because you
just never know. Things happen. That's right.
So now my project will be to upgrade my feed
line systems, grounding network, and a couple
of my antenna connections to handle the higher
power level so that we can be a little bit louder
and represent grid square EN10 a little bit more
loudly this year. Sounds like a really cool project
and those amplifiers that are still being used
just about everywhere. So that's a great upgrade
for those and kind of restore the use on the
old Heath kit gear. So sounds like a good deal.
So you can catch that in CQ Magazine November,
December and January, right? No, it would be
in the November, January, and February issues.
I spent three months upgrading that amplifier
and I thought what a perfect thing to do even
though I usually do QRP to have a kit amplifier
being repaired by new kits. Yeah, well it's kits
for the Heath kit. So how can you go wrong? Yeah,
and I thought that was great. The other thing
we're gonna talk about is where to put your kits
when they're done. This has become a big bugaboo
amongst kit builders and that is a lot of kits
do not have a case. Now some of the Chinese kits
are now coming with these clear plastic snap
together cases or screw together and they work
quite well. The Lydia receiver uses a circuit
board material to make the front panel and the
base and everything. A lot of the four state
QRP kits use circuit board material to make the
integrated case. So there's a lot of good uses
for printed circuit board material. The other
route to go the four -state QRP group, because
they use circuit board cases quite often, they
now have two different standard size cases. One
of them is exactly the right size for the Bit
-X series of kits. And the other one, I think...
might be able to handle the larger micro bit
X. I'll have to find out. But you will have to
drill those and so forth and put them together.
And the way they are assembled is by soldering
the edges of these boards together. And so I
think that's kind of an interesting way to do
it. Tentec used to supply a lot of cases. They
do not anymore. But Hammond does it. And I think
they're there in Indiana. I'm not sure. Not sure
if they're there, but Hammond makes a wonderful
set of cases, all sorts of different sizes for
all sorts of different kinds of projects. Yeah,
that was one of the things that I wanted to ask
you about was some of the enclosures. I love
that idea of the printed circuit board where
you just solder those together and it looks really
cool too. That's pretty neat. Not only that,
but if it's a double -sided board it makes for
a double shielded case. Yeah, and that's exactly
what I was looking for was some shielding and
so I did a project here last week. I've got a
repeater and The Raspberry Pi had died and I
had to replace it and it's been actually off
the air for a good while because it's just been
a mess trying to get it going but I finally got
everything going. But it's in a high RF field
environment because there's a television station
and a 50 ,000 watt FM broadcast station right
there at the site and so Everything gets shielded
because if you turn the repeater cabinet a certain
way, you start picking up the FM broadcast station
in your audio lines. So we had to make sure we
shield everything. So I wanted to put it in a
shielded box. So I bought a little aluminum box
and wanted to put the... Raspberry Pi in it and
I had a serial converter because I could hook
it up and and run mini -com to do the repeater
control over the internet too and then the IRLP
board needed some place to put it because on
the Raspberry Pi you can't just you know put
it in an expansion slot like you do the desktop
so got the box but I didn't have all the little
holes for the power and the video for the monitor
and the USBs and and the serials and all of that
and so I end up buying a Dremel and got started
on on the Dremel and started drilling some holes
and cutting some holes in it and it was just
a mess in a big plastic shoebox for way too long,
but if you had something like that, which it's
done now, but if you had something like that,
what would you suggest for getting those holes
in there? Well, what I usually do is I try to
plot it out as best I can, and then I use the
Dremel to do the pilot holes. and then I use
a full -size drill to widen them out. If I have
square holes, you can get green leaf punches.
You can also get some of these that you can use
a wrench and you close them in and it punches
the hole if it's something large. You can also
use a nibbler tool. it's a rectangular thing
or something like that if it's an aluminum box
or a thinner plastic box the circuit board material
cases I have found you know they don't always
look that super sharp but they have double shielding
and that makes a big difference when you're talking
about being in a high -power broadcast environment
the other thing it lets you do is solder things
to the inside case and ground the thing well.
When you have things like ferrites and so forth,
you can put one on the inside and the outside
to protect your controller from the high power
FM broadcast and television RF. Sounds like some
good options there. I end up going with the Grimel
cutting wheel. There were fairly large holes,
but it was a little scary. Well, what I have
done in the past if I have to use the cutting
thing is sometimes you can take a board or something
and use it to hold the tool in line so that you
can make a nice straight cut. Yeah, I did use
a little piece of scrap metal to do that and
my cousin had actually told me that. And it worked
out pretty well, but it definitely was an adventure.
Don't overlook things like Altoids tins. There's
a lot of small kits that fit perfectly, like
your Pixies and so forth, fit wonderfully in
Altoids tins, and there you have a nice deal.
The trick that I use with Altoids tins is a lot
of times I get these... junk mailing things that
have a thing that looks like a credit card and
it's plastic and it fits an Altoids tin perfectly.
And so I saved those and I put those in the bottom
and I use that as the insulator between the circuit
board and the base of the Altoids tin. Ah, another
good tip there on on the enclosure. So thanks
for those. And we're going to go to break here.
We're due for break, but You talked about the
January and February CQ Magazine articles. Do
you have any idea what's coming up after that?
Yes, and in March we're going to talk about the
Lydia kit as well as an improvement on a kit
that I wrote about last year, the Cricut, which
is put out by the four -state QRP group, and
this is the Cricut 80A, and it has a couple more
options in it, and broaden the response of the
oscillator so that you could put crystals on
more than the provided frequency, so that it
covers the vast majority of cores. of the 80
meter CW band as well as improving a bit even
more on the receive sensitivity and a few other
things. The Cricut is very interesting in that
you snap a 9 volt battery on it, you plug in
a set of headphones, you plug your antenna in
and that's it. The key is built in and the CW
key is part of the kit and the coils are all
wound in spirals on the circuit board itself.
So you don't have to wind any toroids. There
are only 36 parts in it, and it's an easy hour
or two building project. Even for a beginning
builder, we did it as a build -a -thon kit at
FourState QRP, and within an hour and a half,
we had a whole bunch of signals on the air. And
that's a one watt, well, half watt to one watt
CW transceiver. And it's not like a pixie that
can't hear. This thing easily hears signals that
were like an S1 on my KX2. We're easily audible
and able to be QSO'd with it. All right. So that's
coming up in March in CQ Magazine. So I'm going
to go ahead and take a break here. But we'll
come back with Joe. We may talk about some more
of that and also we'll take your phone calls
so get those dialing fingers ready and we'll
come back and take your questions with Joe KZeroNEB
right after this word from the National Voice
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1 to 4 p .m. Eastern Time. You can see the control
room. a 200 ,000 watt transmitter, and the most
comprehensive collection of inventions by the
iconic Powell -Crosley Jr. Also on display is
a huge antique radio exhibit and R .L. Drake's
personal collection of most every Drake amateur
rig ever made. This is a unique opportunity to
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calm be sure to check us out on Facebook Twitter
and Instagram and during the break Joe's been
playing with Alexa in the ham shack and fully
said I should I should get on here and say Alexa
play ham talk live and Then everybody's Alexa
would do that Whenever they listen to the show
But Joe was getting Alexa to figure out phonetics.
Yes, it's pretty cool. It does. At least that
skill allows you to give it phonetics. Well,
so here's another tip from the kit builder, KZeroNEB.
Well, it's time for your calls now. So if you
have a question about kit building or... anything
we've been talking about tonight give us a call
phone number 812 net ham 1 8 1 2 6 3 8 4 2 6
1 or you can Skype us we're ham talk live on
Skype and also on Twitter if you would like to
tweet us and I see dr. Scott right key 0 MD has
already sent me a message and he says what good
kit ideas Do you have for 14 or 15 year old students
who want to learn electronics? Okay, well, there's
a lot of kits out there actually that are more
appropriate for that age group. That little code
practice oscillator is good because it teaches
you the basics of electronics. There is, I would
say, One that I have found to be very successful
in getting people to learn about electronics
is a real simple tester. Now, it's called a transistor
tester, but it really does more than that. We
can play Ron Popeel and say it slices, it dices,
and it purees. And it makes julienne fries. That's
right. And it's about 11 bucks. And what this
thing does is it will test a resistor, a capacitor,
a transistor, an inductor. a diode, a thyristor,
an NPN or PNP or MOSFET, and it will tell you
which pin is connected to which lead. Like if
you hooked up an NPN transistor, it would say
it's an NPN transistor and the emitter base collector
correspond to leads one, two, and three, or whatever
you have it hooked up to. If you hook up a capacitor,
especially an electrolytic, it will tell you
the equivalent series resistance, so we know
if that's good or not. If you hook up a diode,
it'll tell you which is the anode and which is
the cathode. And I think it even identifies certain
ziners. On MOSFET transistors, it'll tell you
which lead is the drain gate and source. And
on all the transistors, it gives you the beta
gain. This is something you can use when you
build other things. So you can use it to test
different electronic components. And it's called
a transistor tester. Some people call it the,
I think it's an M328 or M8 tester. I would look
up that. There are several websites you can find
it on wish .com or banggood .com. And like I
said, they're very inexpensive, but you gotta
take your time. The instructions that come with
it aren't that great, so you're gonna probably
want a meter. Nearby to measure the resistors
because these have five striped codes on them
and so you want to be able to meter your Resistors
to make sure you're putting the right one in
the right place But once you have this gadget
put together you can now test every component
in all the future kits that you build So it's
kind of a neat deal Sounds like a real good idea
I'm Trying to think of others. Of course, the
pixie kits are very popular. Of course, once
again, you got to be licensed to use those. There
are a number of inexpensive AM or AM FM broadcast
radio kits and so forth. Velleman has one that's
kind of... kind of oval shaped somewhat and it
is a commercial FM broadcast receiver and it's
relatively easy to put together. Elenco, E -L
-E -N -C -O, puts together a couple of kits.
One is an AM broadcast only receiver and one
is an AM FM and the neat thing about those kits
are it has a schematic diagram printed on the
circuit board where the part goes. So you can
see physically the part and how it's incorporated
in the circuit and You can make a working AM
FM radio. And yeah, it's kind of interesting
It's kind of sitting on a stand and it's a wide
open circuit board, but it works and actually
works quite well for those who are interested
in An AM broadcast receiver that's relatively
higher performance. There's one called the tech
Sun T EC Sun to P3, like 2 Papa 3 receiver, and
it's a Chinese kit also, and this particular
kit makes a classic 1960s style pocket AM receiver.
However, the loop stick antenna on this thing
is so darn big that I'm able to hear AM broadcast
stations from all over the Midwest in my basement
on this thing. It's probably my most powerful
pocket AM radio. It's very amazing what it does.
There's I'm trying to think of what else for
beginners But those are the ones that I would
say are come to mind. Like I said if they are
getting their license and so forth. The Pixi
Kit is a great way to do it because it makes
a nice little CW transceiver that you can use
across the room and they're very inexpensive.
If you buy those in bulk you'll be spending less
than three dollars each for the Pixi Kit and
I'll tell you how much of a bargain that is.
If you go to buy the BNC connector that goes
on the board you'll be spending almost that much
for each one just to buy that connector. So I
think in bulk I've seen them as little as $2
.18 for those kits just absolutely amazing price
to put together a simple little CW transceiver
All right. Well there you go Scott. There's some
good ideas from Joe on some kits for teenagers
to build that are looking to get into Electronics
and I really like the idea that the transistor
tester with with all the different components
so you can figure out what all what lead is what
and figure out what they are. And not only that,
but you can, like I said, pre -test your components
for your kit. It measures your resistors as well.
So instead of having to read a meter, you just
clip one clip lead to each lead of the resistor
and push the button and it tells you the value.
Okay, there we go. So there's Your answer for
dr. Scott right case your MD and if you have
a question give us a call at eight one two six
three eight four two six one that spells net
ham one or you can Skype us or you can tweet
us if you like and We will I'll be tweeting you
I'll be tweeting you some links for these kits
that we talked about Okay, very good. Well, Don
actually texted us on Skype here, AE4DD, and
wants to know, why do so many kit makers shy
away from surface mount components, especially
the larger ones like 0805, and aren't leaded
components getting more scarce? Well, the...
the leaded components are getting a little more
scarce, but you can use lead -free components
with leaded solder, and I have no issue with
that. The other part of the question, remind
me here, the surface mount. Yeah, surface mount.
805 components are pretty large. The vast majority
of surface mount that I've seen in kits are the
1206 size. The problem with that is that a lot
of people have an aversion to it because things
like the capacitors aren't marked at all. And
so it's kind of hard to deal with them. I was
talking about believe it or not has pads on it
that you can use a pair of wooden tweezers and
hold the part down and it will tell you what
it is but I have seen surface mount parts in
kits in fact the DSO 138 scope kit is available
with and without the surface mount parts already
mounted for you and that's a about a $22 oscilloscope
kit and it does have the option to have the surface
mount already assembled and not. Kit makers shy
away from surface mount if they can because if
somebody doesn't succeed building their kit because
of that obstacle, then people aren't going to
want to build anymore, let alone buy any more
kits that are like that. There are surface mount
builders and there are surface mount kits out
there. But there aren't nearly as many as the
standard through hole components. And it's mostly
because we don't want to discourage anybody.
Now, sometimes it's a necessity, as in a couple
of the kits we've done with forced AQRP. And
what we do with the surface mount components,
especially your resistors and capacitors, is
I just take a tiny dab of solder, not even enough
to make a bubble on the board, just enough to
wet it. and then I take my tweezers and I bring
that part down to the board and I take that iron,
I heat up that end and just get it enough to
stick. It doesn't look good but it sticks and
holds it in the right position. Then I solder
the other half of it and then I go back to the
first half and put some more solder on it and
makes it look nice and even. So if you're doing
a handful of surface mount parts that's the way
to do it. Now if you go to Qrp kits calm not
guys, but kits qrp kits calm there are a couple
of surface mount kits including a 40 meter CW
transceiver that's almost all surface mount so
There are kits out there that do use it but I
think the kit makers tried to shy away only because
they want to make sure that their builders are
successful and by adding the extra burden of
Surface mount parts sometimes it discourages
people however. I don't object to it if there's
like one or two parts because Like the original
Rock mites used to use an 8 -pin surface mount
I see the new ones now have the regular through
holes again, but they used to use an 8 -pin Surface
mount flat pack I see and it really wasn't that
hard to do all you had to do was hold it down
with the tweezers and get one leg soldered exactly
right with all the pins lined up and then it
held it in place and you just went zip, zip,
zip, zip with an iron and a real thin solder
and you got it done. And that's the other thing
when you're working with surface mount parts
you have to have a much smaller finer tip on
your iron and use a thinner solder so you don't
make a lot of bridges between pads. All right.
Well, there you go. There's the answer to your
question and thanks for writing in and we've
got just one minute left Joe and and so I wanted
to get to the dr. Seuss hat because the old hat
is being retired Yes, it is It has been on my
head for 18 years at Dayton and for two years
before that a predecessor to it that had my old
call sign Somebody told me I should donate them
to the ARL museum or sell them as a fundraiser
for AMSAT or something, you know. But we'll determine
later what's going to happen. But we have three
new hats, two of which were embroidered by the
nice folks, Ron and Amy from Gold Medal Ideas.
And they did an excellent job on them at the
Peoria Ham Fest. And these are self -supporting
hats, which means I don't need to put wadded
up newspaper or balloons or something else in
there anymore. So these are self -supporting,
but they will have antenna and so forth on it
as before. And the third one, it's gonna be a
surprise. It's gonna be worn at a special event.
And just trust me, I'm sure the social media
will be full of pictures of the third one. All
right, well, we'll be looking forward to that
coming up in May over in Dayton and see the new
hat so Appreciate you coming on and talking about
the hats and and the kits and enclosures and
and we'll look forward to doing it again and
soon You bet Neil always glad to come on ham
talk live All right. Well, that is a wrap for
this week's HamTalk Live. Thanks to Joe Eisenberg,
KZeroNEB, and everyone out there in cyberspace
for listening and for writing in tonight. And
invite you back next Thursday night at 9 p .m.
Eastern Time. And to keep up with who's going
to be on the show, just go to hamtalklive .com
and click on the schedule link there and you
can see as we schedule future guests for the
show. In fact, I've got a couple I need to throw
in there right now, so I'll do that shortly.
So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying
7 -3, 7 -5, and may the good DX be yours. 7 -3
and good luck from HamTalk Live. Thanks for watching!