Five Watter

Sunday, 3/14/10

Changed the tank circuit, still not much improvement but now almost a full watt output looks closer to 750 mW.

Chatted with W9USS, a local ham who lives here in town and is tolerant of my poor signal and my fist.

It turned into an eventful day though, I called CQ several times and finally heard someone return my call.

N6DIT  (Nice cw call.) Dennis, Mountain Ranch, CA was in a contest (WES).  Turned out to be SKCC..  #3283T 

N7OC Stan from Custer..  we know each other and had a great QSO. 

KE7DZ from Seabeck, WA answered my CQ.  I think he might be pretty close to Alan..  KA4DXP.   This contact was pretty solid and typical of the path between my site and the Seattle area for QRP contacts.

Five Watter

Couldn't wait to put the "Thing" on the air. Worked Bob, W9USS, my buddy who lives here in town. Haven't modified the tank coil or tried to correct the voltage sag so the output was about 1/2 watt. Bob checked the signal and gave it a clean bill of health.

So, one entry into the log book for the "Thing."

(Click on photo to enlarge)

Five Watter

Progressing . Wired the oscillator tube, put the 7100 crystal, keyed it by grounding the cold end of the 2.5 mh choke. The wave form looks good and the tone seemed clean while listening to it on the 830...
It lives!

Five Watter

Nibble, nibble, nibble... that's how to make a small hole larger. The flashing is cheap. If at first you don't succeed, throw it away and start over.

Five Watter

A view from the backside featuring the mounted meter, tuning capacitors the 12 uH tank coil wound on 1" OD ridgid PVC, the homebrew crystal holder complete with a crystal for 7.100, and one of the RF chokes.

Five Watter

Here's how the front panel is evolving. The shafts of the capacitors will be shortened. There are other holes to locate for the crystal socket, a power indicator lamp and a key jack. Maybe the key jack will go in the back....

Five Watter

Here is the schematic for the tube transmitter I'm preparing to build.
It was described in The QRP Quarterly magazine.

I have most of the components and an old chassis that might work but it will leave a lot of unused holes...

Please expand the photo of the schematic and take a look at the design and let me know if you see any discrepancies..