I started my journey into QO-100 with a very simple setup. Details can be found here. I used purely SDRConsole to receive & transmit audio via a simple USB headset. This was no real comfort and it was not capable transmitting CW ;-) 

Fortunateley Andreas DL4JAL published 2021 in the German ham radio magazin FUNKAMATEUR an interesting hardware console. The basic idea behind this console is, that through the internal soundcard SSB-audio as well CW-audio can be transmitted. A hardware PTT key can used to switch SDRConsole into transmit mode. Furthermore it controls the timing for T/R-switching - SDRConsole has some delay between audio input and rf-output via the LimeSDR-mini - so no loss of last DIT or syllable.

Based on the publication of Matthias, DD1US, I bought from him one of these TMT H3930 isolators - Thanks Matthias for supporting the community!!!

My current setup to operate ES'hail & QO-100.

I received a new WLAN grid antenna from a fellow Ham - thanks for this!

My previously used pre-amplifier (the one in front of the final PA) only delivers a gain of abt. 9dB @2.4GHz. This was far too less for my final PA used.

In the German QRPForum someone mentioned a group of QPR enthusiasts QRPGuys. They have some neat QRP kits - transceivers as well as antenna-tuners. 

I gave these kits a try: QRPGuys Portable Tri-Band Vertical Antenna and the QRPGuys 40m-10m UnUnTenna Plus   

In the German QRPForum someone mentioned a group of QPR enthusiasts QRPGuys. They have some neat QRP kits - transceivers as well as antenna-tuners. 

I gave these kits a try: QRPGuys Portable Tri-Band Vertical Antenna and the QRPGuys 40m-10m UnUnTenna Plus   

This post deals with the first one - the QRPGuys Portable Tri-Band Vertical Antenna: 

Some days ago I setup a simle RTL-SDR based monitoring station. Now after about 5 days of more or less constant monitoring I found one interesting thing:  

I stumpled across this intersting post on RTL-SDR.COM talking about monitoring TirePressureMeasurementSystems with a cheap SDR stick and a clever piece of software. The rtl_433 software receives and decodes signals transmitted by tire pressure sensors inside the wheels of modern (I assume at least from the last 10 years) cars.

My initial idea is, that I can monitor the traffic in front of my house - at least traffic of modern cars. As Germany is a car centric country, I expect to catch most of the traffic.

You may have seen my build version of the M0UKD sensor keyer and the Bamatech sensor head. 

As you can see in this post, I've used a simple slide switch to control the power for the sensor keyer. This was a little bit annoying, as you must always check, whether you've turned of the power, when you leave the shack.

As power consumption is not really a big issue - the keyer draws about 2.5mA from two AA-cells. Based on the capacity of an average Energizer Classic AA battery of 1.200mA you will get an on-time of about 300h.

Since many months I've had the idea, to add an electronic switch to the keyer, so it switch of automatically after 15 minutes of idle time.

In search for a suitable pre-amplifier for the SG-Labs PA V3 I was pointed by a fellow ham to this amplifier on Amazon for abt.€17,-

Die Orignal-Firmware des Steuergeräts des HAMWARE Tuners AT-502 hat eine Funktion eingebaut, welche an Hand eines gesendeten Trägers versucht die aktuelle Arbeitsfrequenz zu ermitteln und den dazu passenden Speicher auszuwählen.

Dies funktioniert bei CW relativ gut, im SSB Betrieb ist dieses Verfahren nicht optimal. Der größte Nachteil meiner Ansicht nach ist aber, dass man zuerst einer Träger senden muss, damit die Frequenz eingestellt wird.

With the firmware version 1.8.1 there are some minor enhancements:

• Offset value is displayed on main screen. "O" at the end of the unit is removed
• Waveform display also correct when offset is enabled

Here are the required files:

• Sketch
• NeoNextion library
• AD7881 library
• AD8318 library
• PeakHold library

With the firmware version 1.9.0 there are some minor enhancements:

• Peak-hold works now, when offset is set
• Meter and diagram works in dBm and W mode

Here are the required files:

• Sketch
• AD7887 library
• AD8318 library
• PeakHold library
• NeoNextion library

CobWeb from eBay

Last weekend I've finished my QCX-mini kit for 20m from QRPLabs.

This was a birthday present from my wife and she is very happy, that the QCX-mini now works great ;-) I'm too ...

On Sunday I was able to make three contacts to the US south coast - 5w and a dipole - thats fine.

The Nextion display needs the content defined in the file PowerMeter.HMI. You can either upload it with the Nextion editor via a serial link to the display or you can copy the TFT file to an SD card and put this into the socket on the Nextion display.

I've updated the the display control files to the current Nextion Editor 1.62:

   HMI-file for the editor: here

   TFT-file for direct load to display: here

Comparison between an unmodified MH-31 microphone (dynamic mc) at my FT-818 in SSB and a modified (electret capsule)