Still ticking

This is a time of year for me that tends to get chaotic.. so the ham projects naturally slow down.

I'm also been too lazy to take pictures in the last few weeks too.

Lets see.. I started building up a PIC32MX795 .. but am short the 8 MHz crystal I will need to bring it up for USB use which.. well I might as well.  I did get the boards from Hong Kong to prototype the 0.5mm "PF" center PICs and I've built two up.  I actually, for the first time in a long time damaged one of the boards and PIC trying to fix the damaged pin.  So one of those two are missing Pin 74.. which for my use I do not think will matter.

The boards I used for PIC32 prototyping are about $2 on e-bay and are by "ETT-Team" in Thailand.  They are decent for the price but are a bit heat sensitive.  The one I damaged was one I tried to reflow skillet solder.. I think I overheated the board and that plus having a slightly bent pin on the device that I didn't notice from the sample pack had me do a dreaded bent and shorted pin.  I should have done better with it but I did it in a hurry.

The second one I just hand soldered down and it's perfect.  So.. on those 0.5mm PICs I think I will hand solder.  The 0.4mm leads, even though are smaller.. seems to be of a "tougher" material and actually to me are easier to solder.  If I finish this and then lay out a board, I'm going to go with the PT 0.4mm package.  I had no issues reflow soldering the 0.4mm PT's,,,

I worked the first 9 hours of the ARRL SSB DX contest from the club station at work, under my callsign. I got to use the Alpha 87A and I can see why people pay the bux for those amps.  I was just looking for DX for DXCC (and Alaska for WAS) so I was only "hunting and pecking".  Still on 20m (for about 1 hour), 40m and 80m I worked 86 contacts and 59 different countries (including AK & HI).  Not bad.. was fun too.  I wanted to get back on 20m the next day, but our local NWS spotter training was on Saturday and I had to do or I would have lost the credentials.  I bet I could have done 25 more countries the next day.

I want to get back and finish the amplifier.. I suppose I ought to.

I also have a BeagleBoard-xm coming still and I'll use that as a distraction on my other projects too.  There is interest in using that as a basis for a self-contained (including Latency) SDR within the W0CXX club.  We will see if we have time to take that on also.

I also found a deal on a HD Radio to play with..$19.99.. so far, I can see why it's a dead end technology.  In Cedar Rapids, only one commercial FM station (KZIA) has HD (hybrid digital, not "high-def" by the way).. and supposedly two AM's do 1450 KMRY and 600 WMT.   I got the HD signal to lock on KMRY for about a second and it sound surprisingly good.. but it's not usable.  I'm only about 20 mi away from the transmitters too!  600 WMT is very strong here, and I'm wondering if they turned off the HD signal?  On FM, KZIA's HD subchannel 2, a classic rock station, is very good.  The non-commercial stations, three, are all very good though.. there are additional subchannels that have NPR programming on them.. and in one case the NWS weather radio-- that sounds better than over the FM weather radio.

I was hoping to try DXing digital AM.. I like in the country and have put up beverages in the past, and EWE's Flags, K9AY loops are no issue either.  But I doubt if the signal levels I'm feeding the radio with on 600 and 1450 aren't cutting it for HD AM.. neither will a DXed station from a Beverage.

So I'd say when I replace my failing factory head unit in my car I'll spend the extra $15 difference just to get the WX radio off of KCCK...well that and the very good HD2 channel of KZIA.

But when the difference was $100-$200?  Who'd ever buy that?  It's one of these technologies that could have been very good if it wasn't implemented in such a "half-fast" way.

Anyway.. that's all I've been doing lately for "fun stuff"...  When I make progress on any of my open projects, I'll let you know...