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Building Hardware to Communicate with a LORA Satellite
A couple of months ago, a Spanish PicoSatellite (5cm x 5cm x 5cm) was launched called FossaSat-1 ( https://fossa.systems/ ). It was designed using open source principles and provides a LORA downlink on 70cm UHF using a standard…
Read More »QRP Labs Ultimate3S
Sooooo. A long time ago I discovered that I enjoyed using the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) to see how open various bands were during the day. I even went to various parks at lunchtime to set up…
Read More »Xiegu G90
I recently gave myself a small Christmas gift of a Xiegu G90. I have been eyeing them off for a number of months, and a large client order associated with one of my businesses provided the funds to…
Read More »Finally finished my DMR hotspot
Success! After initially putting together a DMR hotspot based on a MMDVM hat mounted on a Raspberry Pi and configuring with a pi-star image in December last year, I finished putting together the enclosure for it today. I…
Read More »mcHF clones from China
So much has happened in the time since I last posted – I have moved house (and workshop), changed employers, etc, etc, and not been in a position to do much SOTA work, but thats ok –…
Read More »A Slightly Toasted Icom AH4 Antenna Tuner
I purchased a slightly toasted AH4 tuner, which had clearly been overloaded during the tune cycle. The power attenuator had been thoroughly cooked. I spent a couple of afternoons removing the burnt area of the PCB using a…
Read More »SOTA Winter Bonuses!
I just received an awesome email from the SOTA Manager here in the ACT. “The VK1 SOTA 3 point winter bonus period commences at 00:00h UTC 15 June, that’s 10:00 am Friday 15 June 2018 and concludes at 23:59h UTC on 14…
Read More »WSPR in the park at lunchtime
Inspired by Wade (VK1MIC) and Andrew’s (VK1AD) blog posts, I have decided to revive my old VK1ZDJ blog here and start posting what I hope are interesting articles. At the very worst, it allows me an environment where…
Read More »An Enclosure for the QRP Labs QCX 5W CW Transceiver
I have recently obtained a neat little radio from the clever folk at QRP Labs – the QCX-40. https://qrp-labs.com/qcx.html It is a single board CW transceiver, designed to operate on a single band from 80m through to 17m…
Read More »My First SOTA Activation – Tuggeranong Hill VK1/AC-038
Having attended the AGM for the local Canberra Region Amateur Radio Club, I discovered that a group of SOTA enthusiasts were planning on activating a number of hills in the Canberra region on 01Mar2018 at 0800UTC. This seemed…
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