Thanks Steve and a very merry Christmas to you too. - And to everyone else here too.?

73s all

de Tony G0BZB

PS - I did not intend to make a new thread when I edited the title to say SOLVED, but a new thread was the accidental result. I hope this is not regarded as a faux pas in the group's conventions.

开云体育

Looks like a mock-up for the War of the Worlds movie :-)

All devices are mounted on a surface - my kind of SMD...

Michael 2E0IHW

On Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 03:54 PM, Ward Wheaton wrote:

They did have a shot, same as everyone else who tried to order. Sooner or later the kits run out, and no matter how many hams got one, or more, the guy who didn't will cry foul, and scream "unfair!". It's just how the world works, and any attempt to rig the system will fail to provide "fairness". If you limit the number of kits people will just go right back in and try ordering using another name, etc. I'd rather the multiple orders get in and out of the way and not clog up the server for other people. But that's just my not so humble opinion.

?

Ward K7PO

?

I really love some of the features Hans has managed to put into the QCX series - the ability to send messages in CW automatically for one, and also, I am really tickled by how good the CW receive feature is. I don't think I have ever seen a better decoder. Now and then if I lose my cool and miss a bit of CW, I can often just glance up from my paper and pencil and there is the missed word on the screen. How good is that? For the price charged, it is a bloody miracle!! :)) Then there are the beacon features. What a great radio series. The improvement from classic QCX to QCX+ is a big step up - especially the heat sinked finals and of course the neat arrangements in the physical design and the enclosure. I have no mini, so can't comment on that.

I thought I had solved this erratic misbehaviour back eleven days ago, but I hadn't.

Now I have definitively solved it after a few forays with the jewellers loup and my soldering iron. Just to refresh the memory - the issue was an erratic buzzing and strange horrible distortion of the sidetone. It was extremely unpredictable and I thought I had beaten it at least twice. The tone and amplitude of the buzzing seemed to be related to multiple presses of the edit keys, and it would change as I entered different stages of setting the time. The second hour digit buzz would get louder or sometimes softer when I moved onto the minutes one I was clearly hearing some artifact of the logic chips interactions, but could not understand why.

Yesterday I discovered that I could make the buzz and strange tones come on and off by tapping parts of the main board. I had previously realised that knocking on the case firmly with my knuckle could make it come and go, so it was clearly a bad connection somewhere. I had thought the pins which mount the board to the front panel were the issue because once it went away when I wiggled it. Likewise a couple of tiny solder flakes I found and removed.

Tapping the board and ICs more and more lightly with a plastic probe, pointed the way to the centre and rear part of the board so I set too re-flowing these connections. All of the through the hole joints have a tiny bit of the component leg - and then I found one which didn't. I floated the iron over the? negative pin of C24 and there was no wire there at all, just a grey soldered pad. I inspected C24 - I mean, I wobbled it and one end was moving. It seems that the builder may have cut the wires before they put the electrolytic capacitor into the holes, cut one leg a little too short, and soldered the pad but not the wire which did not have the length to get right through the plated through hole. I must have looked over this board with a 5 times mag loup, at least a half a dozen times and missed this. The radio would have passed inspection because C24 negative lead was mostly touching the plating on the plated through hole - touching until it wasn't ,because the board had warmed up, and and then the unsatisfactory behaviour would start and the just go away again randomly, as contact was restored for whatever reason. Oddly, I could always make it go away by switching off and on again. I don't know why that worked but it did systematically solve it for a while.

The solution was to push the capacitor's loose side down to the board and flow more solder into the plated through hole and get enough heat in there to firmly connect the leg. Now the radio is perfect and I feel pleased that I was finally able to find and solve the problem.

I'm really enjoying the radio in spite of this for a while rather puzzling issue.

Ronald,
The sidetone issue is the same whether I'm on the antenna or a DL.? Another note on the sidetone: it's sudenly very "clicky" in addition to the first dit or dah being badly clipped and all of the characters being "muddy".? I listened to the QCX's transmitted signal on my K3, and it sounds fine, so the problem must be with the sidetone circuit rather than the transmitter.? Apparently I messed something up when I was installing the AGC board.? Rats!?

As a side note... I installed the AGC boards into my 30m and 40m QCX Classics today, and they both work fine.?
--
73/72,
Dean K5DH

Thanks to Hans and the extra effort he put in the enclosure/case for my U3S with delivered this afternoon. It took 2 tries and almost 3 1/2 months but it is here now.?

Thank you Hans.?

Merry Christmas and a Healthy and Happy New Year.

Paul,
? love the potato cannon.?

So did Dave ever get one to review??

For fast modes such as RTTY, does anyone know how well the QDX keeps up? What does the transmitted signal look like on another receiver? (I.e. bandwidth usage, and is it still as decodable as when sent using fldigi + a traditional SSB transmitter?)

(I guess I will find out if/when I get my hands on a QDX, but perhaps someone has already tested this.)


73 de SM6VNO Anders

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 07:52 PM, Andy wrote:

On 21/12/2021 19:35, Albert Tatlock's Greatest Hits - Vol 1 via groups.io wrote:

On Tue, Dec 21, 2021 at 08:01 AM, Rod Smith wrote:
may the Corrie be with us.
Classic ;-)
_._,_._,_

Magic stuff that takes me back to my teenage years. I remember when this was played on John Peel's show for the 1st time.

Ah John Peel - aka God.

Radio 1 has never been the same since his death back in 2004 (I kept the The Times obit column for that one, still have it).

Oh the days of hearing stuff from The Banshees in the 70's, through to The Fall or Half Man Half Biscuit for the first time.

On Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 02:54 PM, Laurence Oberman wrote:

Can you share your certifications and reason for your "expert advice".

Also I have not seen your vast cache of non drivel videos yet.

Not that I am a fan of trolls, but an appeal to authority is rarely (if ever) a sustainable argument. Just sayin.

Mark me down as interested. I’ve got a Mac, an iPad, and an iPhone, all aging but working well. I’m not excited about getting and learning additional hardware and an OS to chat with QRP-Labs devices. And out in the field a smartphone makes more sense than any computer.

A kit for the BT LE hardware would be great. A lot of people, including hams have iPhones. I can’t understand the lack of support beyond indifference at Apple. A trillion-dollar company could afford to hire or contract a couple of hams to make their hardware more ham friendly.

—Mike Perry, WA4MP