K0SWE Blog

Today would have been the day of the annual Golden Gate Dirty 30, had COVID-19 not invaded our lives. The race didn't happen, but a couple of us from RMHAM decided to head into Golden Gate Canyon State Park anyway to test out a new apparatus. One of the problems we experienced in 2019 was a loss of power at City Lights Ridge, a central point in the temporary IP-over-microwave network that we set up every year. Rather than haul extra batteries up the hill, we were looking for a creative way to use power more efficiently, and a couple of folks came up with a solution. Using Adafruit Feather LoRa 433 MHz modules and latching relay FeatherWings , they built a remote power control system which would allow them to switch off the network gear when not in use. (I can take no credit for actually helping with development of the system.) Our goal today was to test propagation and see if they would actually reach where we needed. I hiked up to City Lights Ridge with a relay module and ...

After some fussing and fiddling , my custom K3NG Morse keyer with a Arduino shield PCB is complete! As input, it can accept a straight key, paddles with a knob for speed control, or the Winkeyer computer interface; for output, it has a sidetone speaker with a headphone bypass and volume knob, and a separate transceiver output port. It can be used as a code practice oscillator, an automatic keyer, or a Winkeyer interface. It's somewhat redundant as an automatic keyer because most modern radios have that built-in, but it would still help in keeping both a straight key and paddles plugged in simultaneously. It's not a super complex device, but it was a good opportunity to learn more complex circuits than just "microcontroller pin goes to component," PCB design, and now I have a dedicated practice oscillator and Winkeyer interface. I'm happy!

The good news: my PCBs arrived! The bad news: they don't work, at least not out of the box. I was super excited to get my custom K3NG keyer boards in the mail! I spent some time soldering components last night, but found that it wasn't working. My first clue was that there is no Morse code "HI" on the sidetone speaker, nor do the paddles do anything. The serial port Winkeyer seems to work, so the Arduino is functioning. Then I tried plugging the transceiver output into an external practice oscillator and found that it was always grounded. Huh. I think I found the culprit. Can you spot it? The KiCad footprint has the transistor pins in a different order than the transistors I have. The base, collector and emitter are out of order. Lesson learned: attention to detail, don't trust KiCad's footprints to be perfect for your parts. In another mistake, I chose resistor footprints that were exactly as long as my components, but the resistor leads don...

I've been interested in hobby electronics longer than amateur radio. I picked up an Arduino Duemilanove in about 2010 and enjoyed messing around with LEDs, motors and servos. I even designed (but didn't complete) a "Weasley Clock" that would take me and my wife's locations from Google Latitude (when that was still a thing), translate it into one of about a dozen discrete locations like "home," "school" or "work," and turn stepper motors to display those locations on the hands of a clock. I had the electronics and the software, but never really figured out the mechanical aspects of attaching the steppers to my clock's hands. Well, fast forward. About 6 months ago I was messing around with the K3NG Morse keyer design . I built a basic one on a breadboard, but decided at that time to purchase a Mortty kit for its size. I still like the Mortty and if I end up doing CW work in the field I'll probably use it for that. However, I...