Pixie QRP 7Mhz CW Kit

The other week, talk on the australian ham radio Facebook wall turned to kit radios and the Pixie QRP Kit. A number of options were shown and talked about, after a search and comparison, I chose to purchase this Versions of the kit from This eBay seller. with free postage it was around $8. The…

Anderson PowerPole Boots

One of my local Ham radio club members sent me a link to these nifty PowerPole PVC Boots. Why? Because I can, they do make the power pole a bit neater. 50 boots for $15.99 delivered on eBay, i got mine in around a week from HERE. But I’m sure if you search Anderson PowerPole…

The $10 Component Tester

Earlier in the year one of the ham club members turned up with a component tester he had discovered on the internet and built up. The device measures essentially any component you connect on it and tells you what you have. From a simple resistor to a capacitor, diode or even a transistor. the specs…

RaspberryPi WSPR Beacon – WsprryPi

The inspiration to purchase a RaspberryPi originally came from reading an article about turning it into a simple HF WSPR beacon. The device will output around 10 milliwatts directly from the GPIO4 pin and once connected to antenna will transmit away!. The first step was to build a simple band pass filter, i choose 30m/10Mhz…

FT817 Speech Compressor Install

As part of my efforts to improve the performance of my sota station, I have been focusing on the low hanging fruit of changes to help improve performance, better antenna, swapping the internal speaker, better filtering, the latest change is the audio out of the microphone! I managed to find some time and confidence (i…

Band Pass Filter Kit

Another Project for the Raspberry Pi when I get a chance is to try WSPR using the box. To make sure this works properly, it is recommended you use a filter of some sort. I ended up with a simple 10MHz (30m) bandpass filter as a kit from kits and parts in the US. it took 2 weeks…

Solder burns and other shenanigans

I needed to convert 12v to 8.4v, so went for a drive to the local jaycar and purchased a simple voltage regulator kit. The kits is listed as simple,  and thats a good thing, I haven’t soldered in anger for a number of years, and was a bit (lot) rusty!. The kit simply regulates the…