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Written by: G Wolfe - KI0KK

Published: 07 October 2017

Kit Building Expert Joe Eisenberg K0NEB presents at SFTARC Tech Night - 1/20/2017

Joe Eisenberg made the trip from Lincoln to present "Kit Building" for the SFTARC Tech Night meeting. Joe is well known in the local Kansas City/Lincoln area and around the world as being the "Cat in the Hat" person at ham events. He is also the Kit Building editor for CQ magazine.

From Joe's QRZ page he explains his adventure in ham radio and the electronics hobby.

"I have been licensed since 1969 and am currently the Kit Building Editor for CQ Magazine. There is nothing better than sitting down at the bench with parts sorted and ready to be stuffed into a circuit board! My Elmer was Leo Meyerson, W0GFQ, who started me in radio at an early age in Omaha, Nebraska. I am available to speak on Kit Building for your hamfests, conventions and meetings. I can also put on group kit building events as well. Building a kit as a group can be a fun and educational experience. See you on the air!"

During his presentation Joe mentioned a number of companies that you can get kits from and here are some of the ones highlighted:

Nightfire Kits (vakits.com)
QRPme.com
Velleman
Elenco
4sqrp.com
QRPkits.com
Elecraft
qrpguys.com
hamgadgets.com
banggood.com

There are many good suppliers so get that soldering iron going and try some of them. Some of the most interesting kits include CW keyers, component tester (R,L,C) and low speed scope. Some of the kits are based on the Arduino processor and others aren't.

Some of the kit building equipment that was suggested is a good soldering iron preferably one that you can control the tip temperature. Xtronicusa.com is a local company in Lincoln that has a good one. The right kind of solder is important and he mentioned 63/37 0.031 or 0.025" rosin core, no clean as a preferred one that he uses. If you are mounting surface mount parts you might use solder paste and cure it with hot air or a heat plate that has temperature control so its not too hot for the parts. Also to store kits or parts Joe mentioned the Plano 1354 Tackle/Tool Box is available from many stores and in a variety of colors. It has several drawers to hold parts or boards.

Joe finished the presentation with some of his video creations of picture taken at various ham events and then set to music. The final days of Hara Arena in Dayton which has been the home for the Dayton Hamvention event for more than 50 years is changing location and there was a nice video remembering the arena location.

Many thanks to Joe for a fine presentation and sharing of his knowledge.

Details

Written by: G Wolfe - KI0KK

Published: 07 October 2017

For those who have struggled with RFI at the home station here is my solution to the interference.

Over the past few years I have had an annoying set of evenly spaced tones that interfered with my 2M, 6M and UHF reception at home. The noise could be heard for about 100 ft from the house and then dropped off quickly. RF suppressors on the cables did not reduce the noise source.

My final solution proved to be replacing my 4 port Ethernet switch which was located near my radios. The low cost plastic case switch (LinkSys 10/100 5 port SW) was replaced with a another low cost switch with a metal case (Netgear FS10). I still have some interference on 6M but I also have another Ethernet switch downstairs that may be an additional source for 6M interference.

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Written by: G Wolfe - KI0KK

Published: 07 October 2017

Kitbuilder Gary Auchard W0MNA presents at SFTARC Tech Night - 4/21/2017

Gary and Martha Auchard are involved in many amateur radio clubs and projects in the Kansas City and surrounding area. Gary and Martha are involved in the Kickapoo, KCDX and 4SQRP clubs and maybe others. 

Gary has a profile on QRZ.com that includes "I've been interested in ham radio since I was 10 years old and that was over a half century ago. The interest was sparked by a local ham that lived just two blocks down the road. On a Sunday morning his voice came blasting in over a 6 transistor AM radio I was not supposed to be playing with. I knew who he had to be but meeting him when I was only 10 years old was a bit daunting. I finally managed one day to get my kite tangled up in his beam antenna and had to ask for help so I knocked on his door and he just laughed, got his climbing belt out of the basement and climbed up to free my kite which survived pretty well. 

He proceeded to show me his ham station and I was really hooked then. He eventually became my mentor and I became a ham a few years later.

My interests are QRP operation, building kits, building antennas and anything that looks like it might be fun to play with in the areas of ham radio. In the many years I've been a ham I've played with almost every area of ham radio but there's always a new one coming along so I keep interested. I love going to ham radio swapfests and have been to the Dayton Hamvention every year since starting in 1990.

My XYL (Martha) is also a ham and her call sign is W0ERI. Together we enjoy traveling, flying hot air balloons, bluegrass music, model railroading and astronomy, hiking plus numerous other hobbies. We're both retired now so we have plenty of time to do all of that and are really enjoying our retirement. We both retired after working 32 years each at the Xerox Corporation."

Martha also has a profile on QRZ.com that includes "I am a Volunteer Examiner for MOKAN VEC and ARRL VEC and taught license classes for Pilot Knob Amateur Radio Club in Leavenworth, Kansas, for almost 15 years. I spent the early years being net control of the Missouri Side-band Net and Mid-States Mobile Monitor. During my 31 years working for Xerox, I spent very little time on the air and what little I did was 2 meters. Now my husband, W0MNA and I are both into SOTA, Summits on the Air, and are having a blast."

Gary demo'd several kits that he has made over the years. He always has an eye for taking the standard kit and making it better. He has added a VFO with LCD display to a kit project which made it able to cover the entire 40 meter band for CW and then use a switch to widen the bandwidth of the audio signal and listen to SSB signals in the rest of the band. The code to drive the LCD was done in an Arduino MCU which he is very familiar with and the Arduino MCU also controls the user interface to the Analog Devices Direct Digital Synthesizer chip which creates the frequency for the radio to tune across the 40 meter band. The LCD shows the frequency in detail down to Hertz but he also added a neat feature to show the user what segment of the band the current frequency is located (Tech, General or Extra) which I haven't seen from other kit builders. 

Gary also has a knack for making boxes for his kits from PCB board material. He carefully cuts the boards so that they fit together nicely as a box and provide for a shielded box at the same time.

Gary is always digging around under the tables at Hamfests for gently used plastic boxes, wire harnesses from old computers or anything else that can have a second life in one of his projects.

Gary and Martha have used the years of working for Xerox to add to the enjoyment of ham radio. Plus the mentoring of students in classes for their license over the years will be appreciated by all for a long time.

Many thanks to Gary and Martha for a fine presentation and sharing of their knowledge.