Here are some gear and gadget notes:
- Ed, WA3WSJ, has opened up the Hot Water Corner, a website devoted to Heathkit HW-xxx radios. He says, “If you have any pictures of your Heathkit HW-xxx radios, please send then to me with a story about the rig(s). I’m sure others would like to read your story.” I need to dig out my HW-101 and take some pics of it.
- On the AMRAD mailing list, Terry, WB4JFI recommends the SDR Cube. He says,
I wanted to say how impressed that I am with George Heron’s (and OH2NLT) SDR Cube kit. I have an SDR Cube Development setup sent by George, as I am considering how to interface it to the Charleston SDR & Digilent FPGA boards. I have since ordered and received a complete SDR Cube kit, less the Softrock 6.3, which I already have. I anticipate cutting some traces, and soldering additional wires directly onto the dsPIC chip for the Charleston interfacing, so I needed my own boardset.
The kit has excellent instructions, see the sdr-cube.com website. Each board comes prepackaged with its own parts, with SMT resistors and capacitors taped to a paper sheet, and ICs in a small anti-static bag. I have put together almost two boards so far, and everything went together very nicely. Almost Heathkit quality instructions and construction techniques.
I normally don’t like to push a vendor, but this kit is very well done.
- Looking for a club construction project? Consider the Sure PS-LP11111 5~16 VDC linear DC voltage power supply kit. I think this fits the bill perfectly for a club construction project. It’s inexpensive, relatively simple to build, and when it’s complete, the builder has something useful. As one of our club members pointed out, this isn’t actually a complete power supply—it’s missing a transformer and enclosure—but it costs less than $9 in quantity. Suitable wallwart transformers can be purchased for about $5 mail order, probably less if you snoop around the next hamfest.
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