People love to cry that the bands are dead, but do very little to make activity. Combine that with poorly built stations and folks who don't like to work for contacts or use digi modes, and thats what you get...
The bands aren't dead, things like WSPR and FT8 very much prove that. Just different conditions that require different tools. data only phone, no call/txt
telegram @folfyshark
On Wed, Nov 7, 2018, 12:38 AM Marc Jones via Groups.Io, <gw0wvl= [email protected]> wrote: The Bands are far from dead .... People with damp shoelaces for antennas say they are ...
Gw0wvl On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 at 19:25, Doug W Last 24 hours on WSPR.? I guess nobody told my ?BITX that the bands are dead.
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N5WLF, Greggory (or my nickname, Ghericoan)
General Class, Digital Radio Hobbyist
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Ubitx wiring harness pics
Hi Gregory Hope these pics may help in preparing the wiring harness to ease wiring & tracing Happy homebrewing best 73 Pop VU2POP ?
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The Bands are far from dead .... People with damp shoelaces for antennas say they are ...
On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 at 19:25, Doug W <dougwilner@...> wrote: Last 24 hours on WSPR.? I guess nobody told my ?BITX that the bands are dead.  --
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OOPS???? I went and looked,?? I thought mine cost $135 but that was with a case and faceplate. So, I would sell it for $90 plus freight,? no case (has my call sign on it). ? ? ? Sent from for Windows 10 ?
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From: RuartoSent: Tuesday, November 6, 2018 1:18 PM To: [email protected]Subject: Re: [BITX20] HF Signals still back ordering? #bitx40 #ubitx ? I do not know if mine is a 40 or what but I bought it about three months ago. I am not going to build it I am going to sell it. ?
On Nov 6, 2018, at 1:12 PM, Billy Shepherd <dis60cd@...> wrote:
Hi folks. Was getting ready to order another Bitx40 and noticed that my order wouldn't ship until after December 25th. I guess I'm wondering if that is correct lol... thinking (hoping) that's a misprint.
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Antenna is
A lot more rx than tx but tx was around 8w
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Timothy (and TR),
My board has etched in copper "Bitx40v3 (C) HFSIGS.COM, 2016"
I doubt that PC board has been updated since then, if so it wasn't mentioned in the forum.
D15,D16 have a little diode symbol in the silk directly under the component.
That might be what you see in the photo and figured was a component marking.
If he's a hired gun, he probably gets all the dog boards that other folks give up on.
Not surprising he would run into the occasional head scratcher.
On my Bitx40, there was some sort of short under C107.
Must admit, that took me awhile to figure it out.
Removed the cap, it ohm'ed out fine, didn't see anything?wrong with the board.
Cleaned everything with alcohol, put it back, and all was well.
Perhaps a solder whisker shifted over a few microns in position during shipment,
or some solder flux picked up moisture?
But these do get checked out at HFSigs before shipping.
Would be interesting to take good random poll of forum members, see how many?
had trouble with the boards as received.
We hear tens of people with trouble in the forum, but there are thousands of boards out there.
> I get the feeling though that I was the only one who gave half sensible answers to is queries a while back.? (many by PM).
I vaguely remember somebody talking about stuff not being right and buying all new crystals.
And I may have posted my best shot at an intelligent response,
though I've been pretty busy these last few months.
Seemed the wrong approach, but wasn't going to argue.
Lots of people think I take the wrong approach too.
Jerry, KE7ER
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Hi Doug,
What power level and antenna?
Jim KH6SKY
On 11/6/2018 2:25 PM, Doug W wrote:
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Last 24 hours on WSPR.? I guess nobody told my ?BITX that the
bands are dead.
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Re: Apparent component swap in design and assembly of pc board v3
#ubitx-help
Really? R37 and C32 are in series, so
the order makes no difference, although the schematic is drawn
incorrectly. Fix your schematic.
On 11/6/2018 8:38 PM, ce3afc@... wrote:
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According to the schematic v3, capacitor C32 should be connected
on one side to pin 2 (emitter) of Q32 and resistor R36 and the
other side to R37.? In my board both components are swapped and so
are the silk screened references.? Is this a general PC board
design and assembly mistake or just my board.? Correction can be
made unsoldering both components and swapping them again.? Just
the wrong silk screened references will remain.? Any advice will
be appreciated.? Thank you!
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Re: Apparent component swap in design and assembly of pc board v3
#ubitx-help
My V3 board was from the 2nd batch late last December and is exactly like yours.
The boards are updated continuously - the schematics, not so much.
Advice?? Wire is up and run - mine works beautifully!
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On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 07:38 PM, Axel - CE3AFC wrote:
According to the schematic v3, capacitor C32 should be connected on one side to pin 2 (emitter) of Q32 and resistor R36 and the other side to R37.? In my board both components are swapped and so are the silk screened references.? Is this a general PC board design and assembly mistake or just my board.? Correction can be made unsoldering both components and swapping them again.? Just the wrong silk screened references will remain.? Any advice will be appreciated.? Thank you!
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Apparent component swap in design and assembly of pc board v3
#ubitx-help
According to the schematic v3, capacitor C32 should be connected on one side to pin 2 (emitter) of Q32 and resistor R36 and the other side to R37.? In my board both components are swapped and so are the silk screened references.? Is this a general PC board design and assembly mistake or just my board.? Correction can be made unsoldering both components and swapping them again.? Just the wrong silk screened references will remain.? Any advice will be appreciated.? Thank you!
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Jerry;? ? at the D16 posn I appear to be looking at the SMask on the PCB - best photo that I have. at D15 there appears to be shiny solder but there could be no component placed.
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Sweet. I've found one here in the States for $78 shipped...I've sent HF Signals a message asking if there was going to be a 2 month delay in shipping....hope to hear back soon or I'm buying the local
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It was up to Monsieur Trager to do all the searching of the forum -? as far as I was concerned I was in the Cone? of Silence.? I get the feeling though that I was the only one who gave half sensible answers to is queries a while back.? (many by PM).
"On my Bitx40 from Dec of 2016, D15 and D16 do not have zero ohm resistors, they are left empty..
The board accommodates either a Sot23-3 for the Bat54s, or a fallback of the dual 1n4148's plus pot."
you will by now have seen the photo? which shows SM resistors or SOMETHING mounted at the? D15 and 16 board that Trager was working on (did he put them in ?? perhaps yes to add in the resistance taken out when the? 100R trim pot was removed ) so perhaps this was an interim revision of the copper ?? or a Stuff UP.?
He did not buy the boards; Someone did some time back when I do not know. The board SN is on the photo but I would suggest for instance AF and such interested parties? stay out of it because Trager does repairs for money it seems and he has done a lot of work he cannot bill for and will have a temper to match I would guess.
I quote -?
"best bet is to upgrade to Allard's v2 firmware and use clk0 from the si5351."? Appreciate the point but? ?Trager and I took it as a given that this board was ready to run and did not require an upgrade c/off? ? Santa Claus , the Archangel Gabriel or anyone else.? ?It was essentially a DOA PCB,? and there were four more with it for rework.? He does not know if they all had same issue or the purchaser tested one and found it faulty and therefore wanted them all looked at.??
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Re: the cause for the spurs, found!
I had to re-bias after swapping the TX transistors (Q20, Q21 and Q22) in June. I wondered why TX-power on SSB went down - and the reason was that Q20 was not on the correct operating point. Allisson gave the right hint: At ideal bias the collector of Q20 (if a BFR106 is used) shall have about 6V. And just by looking up that one, I am wondering now if a lot of solutions (or the right approaches) have not already been discussed in the past.
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I believe the 12mhz crystals for the Bitx40 are all from the same bin after sorting by frequency.
The filter uses them at series resonance, the BFO uses the crystal at the parallel resonant frequency.
This gives the correct offset for the Bitx40.
Trimmer cap not needed.
If you do want to move the BFO, best bet is to upgrade to Allard's v2 firmware and use clk0 from the si5351.
Am curious how much higher "slightly high" is.
Not that it matters now.
I'm not sure how thorough the check at HFSignals was, but doubt it was deaf when shipped.
This sort of thing has typically been something like the broken toroid wire or cold solder joint
previously mentioned, since they do check boards before shipping.
Farhan's video? ??
shows how to go through the receiver and figure out exactly where it goes deaf.
He just touches a 1 meter piece of wire (an antenna that picks up local QRM) to the?
various stages, expecting the resultant noise to get louder and louder as he progresses
back from the audio amp to the RF front end.?
That technique would likely have pinpointed the reason for the deaf receiver.
>? what if the factory installed by mistake at D15 and D16 posns not zero ohm resistors as they should be ,? but? even DIODES ?
On my Bitx40 from Dec of 2016, D15 and D16 do not have zero ohm resistors, they are left empty..
The board accommodates either a Sot23-3 for the Bat54s, or a fallback of the dual 1n4148's plus pot.
Traces from the Sot23 go around D15,D16 and tie off directly to T4.
A quick query to the forum and we could have told you of the few differences between board and schematic
(as enumerated in my previous post), that got posted here a number of times in 2017.
FYI, I believe the boards get auto-stuffed for the surface mount parts.
So most stuffing errors would happen across a thousand boards or so due to a wrong reel of parts.
And we'd hear all about it in the forum if it wasn't caught at HFSignals.??
Never been an issue.
OK, I'm over it too.
Except to say I suspect that this may have been a pretty simple problem?
before?all the shotgunning happened.
Jerry?
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On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 03:36 PM, Timothy Fidler wrote:
He matched the xtals but did not measure the passband as per your above.? I warned him that he would? be fitting xtals of unknown motional params to? a set of capacitors that were not matched.? He did not have the equipment that could do more.? Bear in mind the thing was utterly useless , utterly deaf before. Afterwards it could Rx SSB.? So that's progress. What he DID find with the as removed xtal set was that one which was? slightly high (and therefore should be the one at the BFO posn for LSB selection)? was IN THE FILTER SET . and the one at the BFO posn was at nominal frequency - I have to trust him that he marked them properly before removal and test.? So; no trimmer capacitor, regardless of as published schematic? in posn and a lousy job of selection of filter xtals. Perhaps? someone hungover on a Monday ?? about that time he found he had plenty of carrier? bleed through and also that the BM was not as per the schematic on the desk? (I am not sure if this was measured at PA out but I suspect so )? he decided to give up - it was? a job he was doing for someone else.? ?TEF
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my recent ubitx was delivered with the LSB BFO way off, but the USB side okay.? try both USB and LSB on appropriate bands.? when BFO is right, the SSB and CW audio are quite nice.? I am surprised the tune-up instructions don't provide a target value for these BFO settings, as once you are close it is easy to adjust.?
73 Curt
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Built this circuit up, and caught the need to use a 560 ohm resistor to feed the transistor that drives the LED.? Using a orange LED and a LDR with 20k dark resistance.? Only on very high signals do I get illumination, and even then no perceived AGC action.? Strangely then when I increase gain control, the LED gets brighter which implies awful poor isolation.? To install this thing I disconnected the wire from the hot (or upper) end of the audio gain control - attached this wire to the AGC circuit input and the output onto this pot.? I connected circuit ground to the ground end of the pot, and biased it from the DC connector.?
Circuit seems to work in the videos but not in my build.? Thought about tweaking parts on the input amplifier stage, but as light doesn't lead to attenuation wondering if my build has 2 flaws.? Anyone around who had success with this?? I am not seeking a robust AGC, but somethng to squash the loudest signals, so I need to use it less.? If this thing worked I would implement an AGC on/off switch.?
73 Curt
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Finally got my ubitx working mostly correctly. Everything is default, firmware is 2.0. After following tuneup procedures, I'm able to tune to local AM stations and hear properly, audio is great aside from the unignorable louuud tone. It makes listening with headphones unbearable, but I can still hear the (strong) signal under it. The pitch of the tone does change with bfo adjustment and recalibration, but I can't change those as the quality of the actual signal is hurt. The tone is also significantly quieter, although still present on USB in comparison to LSB. Tuning does NOT change the pitch of the tone.
Could this be a tuneup error? Or something deeper?
Thanks!?
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 here it is after? a lot of rework with the dual diode pkg as per factory installation . The SX xtal was thrown out an a full HC49U one (Digikey) was put in from the new matched set. As you can see, it has had? a bit of rework.? NOW here is a Dorothy Dixer... what if the factory installed by mistake at D15 and D16 posns not zero ohm resistors as they should be ,? but? even DIODES ? (this was not tested for because he was sick of working on the PCB by this stage )? or perhaps two unmatched resistors.. that would really louse it up . Perhaps a few,? as in a production batch? were issued in this state and the other buyers have just given up ?? Anyways I get nothing to take away from this discussion so that's all I know and all he knows and frankly;? I am "Over it "? ? TEF
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Ghericoan
Marc Jones
Jim Sky
