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NJQRP MEETING SUMMARY

Saturday, May 26, 2007


We had a fun club May meeting last weekend with a great turnout, especially for a holiday weekend. The "Bring Your Unbuilt Kits" theme was a big hit and we'll definitely continue that as an ongoing part of our meetings. There were a number of buyers and sellers, so I assume there are some new homes for those unbuilt kits we all have laying around... hopefully a percentage of those will now get built!


We had two guests from afar... Doug Quagliana KB2UPW/5 all the way from Texas, and Mike Puchura WA8BXN from Ohio. Now that's dedication to the homebrewing spirit we espouse at the NJQRP meetings! We were very happy to have these guys and interact with them before the meeting at our breakfast starting point, as well as duriong the "working" portion of the meeting. Thanks for making the trip and making our monthly meeting even better, guys!


The project discussions were also very interesting this month...


George N2APB lead off with an update on his ongoing, no-compromise, high-performance, all-band, all-homebrew transceiver called the PIC-A-STAR. The Yahoo Group has lots o' doc and it's easy to sign up to see it all if you're not a member of the group. Googling "PIC A STAR" will show many other versions of the transceiver.) George explained his major addition of a panadapter display to the design, to yield a superb 4" x 4" graphic LCD display of the spectrum being tuned.


Mark G7LTT gave us some additional information, overview and updates on the Frequency Counter club project than many guys were recipients of at the last meeting.


Dave WA2DJN explained his homebrew balanced tuner and how it was used efefctively to tune the 110' loop antenna up in his attic. It was modified from the RockoNator, as depicted in the GQRP Handbook.


David N0YMV explained some magic he iuntends to do with a old DSL modem he found. (Dave is also a brand new dad!!!)


Richard WB2ZKW delivered an update on his KWM-2 experiments to unbalance the modulator to produce two BFO freqs.


Douglas KB2UPW/5 reviewed satellite data demodulated by a PC DSP program, displaying charts and plots of the satellite telemetry.


David KB2TQX showed us more of his neat gadget finds from various Internet hobby pages (see our References page for these). He showed us a cool LED comparison/tester and a PICkit Serial Analyzer that is useful for developing/testing SPI/I2C/async serial protocol buses. (Dave also brought ice tea for the gang - very helpful during these warm meeting months!)


Jim K2SZ showed and described a project from Jan 2007 QST that uses audio from a Morse keyboard to key a transmitter (i.e., VOX).


Ted W2TAG described how his ATS-3A transceiver is now fully operational and how he loves it (although freq tuning is slow). Ted also discussed his counter, bluetooth headset and the SJRA.org.


See you all later this month at the June meeting! (See the NJQRP Event Calendar for the full set of meeting dates.)


PS: Guys attending... Ron W2OIL, Mike WA8BXN, Erwin W2FTN, Richard WB2ZKW, Tom NU2I, Hal KB3HAA, Jim K2SZ, Al WA1CZG, Jon W2MC, Ted W2TAG, Mario N2AK, Nick K2JMK, Joe N2CX, George N2APB, Larry WA2DGD, Gary K2GW, Bryan AA3WM, Charles W3DEA, Douglas KA2UPW/5, Bob AB2WM, John NU3E, David N0YMV, Gerry N2GJ, Lenny W2BVH, David KB2TQX, Dave WA2DJN and Mark G7LTT.


73,

Joe, N2CX and
George, N2APB  


Last updated: June 4, 2007