QRSS/QRPp and
Beacon News/info/Blog :)
with some very interesting Links..
Early Reports/Captures of the activity days of the
7Mhz Beacon here and 10Mhz Beacon here
The KNIGHTS-QRSS Clipboard.
My Online Grabber **NOT on 24/7**
The
current
projects.. Work in progress ;-) 
NEW!!
My current project(s) are 7Mhz (40m) and 10Mhz (30m) QRPp Beacons
Which I
hope will
be running in the order of at least 100mW for starters It is a simple Colpitts Oscillator
2N2222A with a 2N2222A
Buffer/PA feeding into a Low Pass Filter,
it's giving a good 50mW
into a Dummy Load at the moment. Over time it will change in power levels and design and the type of "modulation" it sends out.
The Circuit Diagram of the Osc,
Buffer/PA G6AVK-1
Dec 2005...
The Beacon's
first live transmission... G6AVK-1
Things have been coming along very well,
the 10.140.000 Mhz XTAL has arrived and is now
installed, it is easily tunable (with
a little extra work) from 10.139.8 > 10.140.100
Mhz and is quite stable as well but it will need some form of XTAL Heater in the long
term.
My initial tests was running 100mW @ 10.140.080
+/- with a simple NE555
Square wave generator,
the Beacon was heard in ON
(Belgium)
and Italy,
pretty good stuff.
Below
are some early captures of my
100mW G6AVK-1 10Mhz Beacon
Received from Paolo I1DFS
showing the Square wave
Received from Erik ON4LP
Received
from Luc ON4AOL
Received from Pierre
ON5SL just visible in the middle
Various Captures of my
tests running the G6AVK-2 10Mhz Beacon at varying Power Levels can be seen HERE
General News and activity reports:
28th Dec 2005...
A new
Beacon - G6AVK-2 is born
(added a 2N3866 PA...)
Over the last few days I added 2N3866
PA, which I tweaked down to give 500mW
O/P, I also built the New
555 Waveform Generator (design by
DL6NL) which is working very well. You can see below how
the waveform
is currently setup, this was
captured locally with Spectrum
Lab by DL4YHF
and here you can see the
slight drift of the Oscillator due to it being on only for a few mins.
The Circuit
Diagram of the Osc, Buffer/PA - 2N3866 PA G6AVK-2 Beacon
Here
is the current Sawtooth I use.
More work
has been done
with the Oscillator
of the Beacon,
to improve
the stability,
use of a very
high quality SHF trimmer has been
fitted to replace the original
one I used to "pull" the XTAL, I also added was some extra Voltage Regulation and a
block of Polystyrene
around the XTAL and made
the Box "Draft Proof" to aid stability. Measurements show the drift
during the course of today's test of 6 Hrs to be around 1 -3 Hz as far I
could measure, pretty good with NO
XTAL Oven/Heater.
Jan 1st 2006... Circuits
added
I have just added the two circuits diagrams of my Beacon, the
first being the 2 x 2N2222A 100mW
Beacon and the latest with the added 2N3866 PA Beacon-2 500mW
21st-22nd Jan
2006... New Pics and updated Circuits.
I finally got around to fitting the DB6NT
Xtal Heater to
the Colpitts Oscillator and results as far as I can measure look
quite promising. A test was run over the course of 18hrs and
total
drift was no more that 3Hz.
UPDATE:
Since the last test changes have been made at the suggestion of Peter
DL6NL, in that I should place the
Heater Board under the Xtal and this does seem to have improved the
long term drift. Results of a 24hr stint gave no more than a 1Hz drift.
The circuit diagrams have
been updated and now provide
the component values I have used along with some "Fair quality Photos"
I took of the beacon, including
one whilst it was Active,
notice how "Clean" the spectrum is on the Analyser :)
22nd Jan 2006...
Some Captures of my weekend
tests running G6AVK-2 on the
21st-22nd Jan 2006 can be seen here
Capture from DL6JAN19th Feb 2006...
Larry WB3ANQ now has a QRSS Beacon running on the 18.100 Mhz (The 17m Band) from time to time.. Check his site or News/Updates..
I have also added some useful links at the bottom of this page, plus with the kind permission of Peter DL6NL his NE555 Waveform generator circuit is available for download.
12th March 2006...
I have an Online Grabber which Captures "live" Screenshots from DL4YHF's SpectumLab and these are then uploaded to my Web Space.
News of when this is Online will be posted in the The "Knights" QRSS Mail List
19th March 2006...
Just added some new Captures of my low power tests running just 50mW, reports from Norway and New Zealand!
27th March 2006...
I ran another 50mW test during this weekend and with excellent reports from David VK6DI and Mike ZL4OL I dropped the power down to 10mW on the next evening, Mike sent a rather nice Capture showing a very busy band with four nice signals seen, all this in 100 Hz Bandwidth, my 10mW Triangle at the top of the screen (680) on the scale..
9th April 2006...
New! My 7Mhz (40m) Beacon was tested during an activity weekend 7th-9th April.
As the year goes on it was noticed that the MUF on 30m is not to good for "Inter EU" tests, so Peter DL6NL suggested I should build a 7Mhz (40m) Beacon. All that was needed was another Colpitts Oscillator @ 7Mhz and I used the Buffer/PA of the 10Mhz Beacon with a slight adjustment to the Filter. The output measured on the Spectrum Analyser was Clean with no 2nd/3rd harmonics seen, then Peter then suggested to have a 40M activity weekend.
In the end 5 (five) Stations where active
at times, Staf ON6RR on 7000.890, I0SKK Alex on 7000.870 , G6AVK Colin
on 7000.850 , DL6NL Peter on 7000.830 and finally
Vic G3GKI on 7000.810.
You can have a look at Reports/Captures of 7Mhz here and 10Mhz here
7th May 2006...
A new Beacon is born.. G6AVK-3 for 7Mhz and 10Mhz
Over the last few weeks I have developed a new Beacon which uses the CWKTiny Keyer by Chris DL6JAN,
2 new Oscillators where built for 7Mhz and 10Mhz with some changes
to the Varicap section to allow it to be fed by the new DAC circuit designed by Chris which uses a TL062 dual Op amp.
The major change was to the Buffer/PA section which was rebuilt
as the previous the Beacon's where only for development and looked
rather untidy Hi! it is also "modular" in that changing Bands is just a
matter of plugging in the other Oscillator.
The PA now runs in Class C and with the addition of simple PTT switching to the Buffer stage, the CWID and the use of all the Graphics Modes (HELL, DFCW etc) with the CWKtiny
are possible.
An example of Hell (Hellschreiber)
An example of DFCW
Many types of waveforms possible
Circuit diagram in PNG format **Updated**
Circuit diagram in PS format **Updated**
Circuit of DAC in PNG format Kindly provided by Chris DL6JAN
17th May 2006...
My 7Mhz (40m) Beacon G6AVK-3 was tested during the activity weekend of the 12th-14th May.
After the final changes to the new Beacon G6AVK-3, now with adjustable Power Control (the Schematics have been updated) I decided to join in the Activity weekend on 40m running just 250-300mW, but with a very POOR VSWR. Stations active where:
7 000 810 G3GKI, 7 000 830 DL6NL, 7 000 850 G6AVK, 7 000 870 ON6RR 7 000 890 ????
On Friday 5th I chose DFCW5 and QRSS3,
but Band Conditions where a little disappointing, so the following days
sessions I ran HELL (Hellschreiber) this is becoming a favourite mode of mine.
Reports/Captures can bee seen Here
New G6AVK-3 Beacon Pictures coming soon!!
4th June 2006...
After
a busy weekend on another 40m Mini-Test, 5 stations reported my Beacon.
G3GKI, ON6RR, G3VYZ, ON5SL and new reporter Enrico IZ2 KQP
- Locator JN46QH.
About mid Saturday morning I changed modes from HELL to FATCW, below is a local capture showing my Callsign in FATCW.
I have put up some Captures of the 7Mhz Mini-test mostly showing the FATCW, one even @ 10mW's!!
*****Also I have finally added some Pictures of the latest Beacon (G6AVK-3) ****
23rd June 2006...
I have just added a link to the LIVE FFT - by G7IZU which now monitors on 10.140.000, this is one of the best propagation sites I have ever seen!
22nd July -
New Link added to the KNIGHTSQRSS CLIPBOARD. Here you can see who is QRV running a QRPp Beacon, many thanks go to Johan ON5EX for this great idea.
27th August 2006...
Some more QRSS links added, Des M0AYF and KL7R.
Added the latest Pictures
of the G6AVK-3 Beacon which now has switchable LPF's (low pass filters)
and adjustable drive to the PA stage and can actually be used now with
all the lids on Hi!
22nd October 2006...
After a successful 7Mhz activity weekend of the 20th/21st October, Captures/Reports have been added here There was a total of 4 Stations active at times.
Also with the addition (to complete??) the Buffer/PA unit I have uploaded the 7Mhz LPF details here
So what's my next HF project? possibly a Beacon for 160m, who knows ;-)
27th November 2006...
The first session of the "4th Candlelight Contest" has passed (19th Nov) and Johan ON5EX has put on-line the results for the Session #1 and also some "reports and Captures" that stations sent in to him... very interesting indeed :-)
Session #2 of the Candlelight Contest is on Sunday 10th December - 0700-2200 UTC, with the stations running even lower power, IE 10mW and 1mW.
Also of note, plans have started here for my new 160m M.E.P.T, with most parts here and hope construction will begin soon.
29th April 2007...
Some station news and links fixed.
Current tests of the 160m Osc have proved interesting which is loosely based on the design from techlib.com . The big problem is getting the Xtal to "pull" (only a Max of 12Hz) to be able to modulate it enough for the Graphical modes, HELL, Triangles, FATCW etc.
I
personally think this will not be possible, so I need to go another
route with this, maybe a DDS but again modulation is going to be the
problem. I also had this problem (to a lesser degree) on 80m using my original Colpitts and being "Rock bound" on the lower Bands is proving to be troublesome with QRM.
TS-850 Update...
Improvements have been made to the stability (which was very good) to my TS850SAT with the addition of a SO-2 TCXO, the stability now is quite remarkable! (it was very good before). I had to order the TCXO from the USA (East Coast Transistor) due to the current RoHS and WEEE European legislation, so basically KenwoodUK can supply any country but none in the EU.. crazy!
CWKTiny...
Chris DL6JAN has fixed a few small Bugs that where in the "Firmware" of his CWKTiny Keyer,
also there are some very nice additions, using Modes like Slant, FATCW,
Triangles is very easy now as he has added new commands for this. More
info can be found here:
http://www.proehl-elektronik.de/cwk/bugs/bugs_e.html for the Bug and News upto V2.70
http://www.proehl-elektronik.de/cwk/manual/manual9_e.html for the examples of the new commands.
Test Gear update...
I
am gradually adding to my old Commercial Test Gear, new Bird Slugs and
HP attenuators. However my last main project was a GPS Locked 10Mhz
standard which can be piped around the shack for the various test gear.
Its nice to have an accurate frequency standard and a GPS locked
Counter. The Racal Counter 9918 being quite old uses 5Mhz for its
internal standard so a simple circuit was added inside the counter to
Div by 2 the 10Mhz... works well.
7th May 2007...
I have been running some tests over the Bank Holiday on 30m, trying Triangles and Slant modes, both work quite well but poor MUF resulted in only a couple of reports.
Here is a "local" Capture of the "Slant" mode from today, you can see the CWID at the beginning of the Capture.
A Capture sent in from Mike G8NXD in IO70je showing my 200mW Slant signal (660 on the Scale) and Peter DL6NL's new M.E.P.T running FSKCW @ 30mW (650 on the scale) sending "NL".
A nice and interesting Capture from Chris DL6JAN @ 18:28utc after my Mode change to FSKCW, notice the "double trace" effect at the beginning of the Capture, mutli-path possibly??.
19th september 2007...
After quite a busy Summer with work and with the recent
aquisistion of an FT847 I have been busy monitioring 4/6m sporadic E,
and had some interesting contacts.
Now Codnx are improving on the "lower" bands there has been a lot of interest with Online QRSS Grabbers discussed on the "Knights" mail group. These are basically Live Captures of stations monitoring for example 30m (10,140-10,140,100 approx) which are then uploaded in almost Real Time to a Web Page.
Two excellent examples of Multiple Grabbers on one page can be seen
here:
Claudio's (I2NDT) Multiple Grabber
Max's (IK0VVE) Mulitple Grabber
I have listed these two as they show all of the "current" active ones, and of course there is mine ;)
G6AVK Online Grabber **NOT 24/7**
I have also added a VERY brief description to the "test gear" photo regarding what I use as my GPS locked source.
10th October 2007...
With recent activity on 30m and 40m during a spell of very good condx, a few new members of the "Knights" list have asked questions about receiving QRSS/QRPp. Des (M0AYF) has written a superb "how to" which I can highly reccomend. Click here to read it.
9th March 2008...
Its been quite a while since this page has been updated, so its time to update on the latest DDS Beacon I am working on. It is based on the design
by Matteo Campanella, IZ2EEQ who's article appeared in QEX Magazine.
It is based around an Analog Devices AD9851 DDS and a PIC16F628, for the DDS board I used an AmQRP DDS-60 (I changed the LO to 25Mhz on the DDS-60) and the initial build for the PIC circuit
was on Vero-Board. After some teething problems I decided to use a
MAX232 or similar for the RS232 to replace the two transistors in the
design as it would seem my RS232 card gave some problems, very rare but
this seemed the case. I used a Cstech PIC18 Dev board (modified to use a 7805 regulator) with an onboard MAX
equivalent chip and mounted the DDS-60 board to that, this bare bones unit gave
about 50mW on all bands up to 50Mhz into a 50 ohm load.
The Beacon has
evolved a little with the addition of a 6 Band LPF (low pass
filter) from a previous project and a PA module. Modes are DFCW3/6/10,
QRSS3/6/10, FSKCW3/6/10 and CW.
This MEPT has been active on all bands
160m-40m with very good results, I think that the long term drift will
need to be looked at and should be easily improved by using a "high
spec" 25Mhz LO in the order of 1-2 ppm or better, this will be done in
the future once I can find a suitable supplier.
Two larger Pictures can be found here
The HEX file
can be downloaded in the QEX Files Section and Matteo will also provide
the Source code for a very small fee, which I do also have but at this time
due to being a total "novice" cannot get the code to compile yet..
Errata to the original article:
Q2,Q3 emitters should go to ground.
Pin 4 MCLR/ of the PIC should go to 5v via R5 (10k)
Some links useful links to this project:
The original QRSS-DDS article
The DDS-60 page
The PIC board kit I used
Another project constructed over the "Winter" was the Antenna Analyser by VK5JST. A really super kit and has already proved very handy with some antennas I have made. A kit is available from the SCARC on there Projects page.
30th June 2008...
Just
cleaned up the pages and a few links fixed and added. My main activity
during the summer is Sporadic E on 6m, but looking forward to the
winter months again for more QRPp/QRSS tests and construction. I still
monitor 30m every night of course and put on the Grabber if there is something of interest.
73 Colin - G6AVK
Some very useful and interesting
QRSS/Beacon and Tech Sites:
What is QRSS ??
G3ZJO's Site Be sure to check his Blog :)
QRSS Website
The "Knights" QRSS Mail List
LIVE FFT - by G7IZU
Digisonde Dourbes Current Propagation
Keyer from Chris DL6JAN
The Freakin Beacon
K1EL K-ID Keyer
DB6NT
Xtal Heater
Ring Core Calculator by DL5SWB and more..
Harmonics Filter from the GQRP Club
WB3ANQ QRP experiments page
G0UPL - Hans Summers Site
DL4YHF's SpectumLab Awesome...
OE5EEP QRSS Experiments Page
I0SKK/QRP
Andrea IW0HK
David VK6DI
PADAN Group Argo/Spectran Software and much more!
KNIGHTSQRSS CLIPBOARD
