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Hi all - Just joined this list and hope I am on the waiting list for the next run of 30m kits. My home QTH is very noisy electrically (power lines and several industries nearby) so HF receive operation is a bit of a chore, but at least I can set up beacons! The next one after the 30m will be 10m, and then possibly LowFER or MedFER. The calls on 30m and 10m will be VA3XRB (for "Xperimental Radio Beacon"!) and simply XRB on LowFER and MedFER. I'll post here and on the various other beacon boards when I get operational. Now back to my other interests - laser communications and 9kHz experiments... Regards, Keith VA3QF / VA3XRB CAMBRIDGE, Ontario EN93tj

I emailed the author of Argo regarding my problem using an external USB sound card. Alberto got right back with this reply. "Argo is a very old program, that I wrote with the simplicity for the users in mind. For this reason, I did not give, as instead I did for Spectran, the possibility to choose which sound card to use, to make things simpler. So Argo uses the sound card defined as default to Windows. If you want to use that external USB sound adapter, you simply open the control panel of Windows, in the Sounds section, and select that adapter as the default for recording. Otherwise, if you want some more flexibility, you can use my other program Spectran : http://www.weaksignals.com which offers the possibility to change on-the-fly the sound card used, and also some more features. 73 Alberto I2PHD" I downloaded Spectran and it works great with my Signalink USB. One note - on set up, select your default sound card for output, else Signalink will key your radio if it's in VOX mode. Don't ask how I know this : ) 73 Mike N0QBH

Hi Guys, I thought I would post this to let you the progress so far. I have all the active and passive components in stock and am just waiting for the PCB guys to deliver the boards and a parcel of toroids to arrive from the Toroid King in the US of A. Hopefully this will all be done and the kits will be bagged before I head of to Friedrischaven for the hamfest on the 24th of June. Given the interest shown in the kits we have overstocked on boards and parts so hopefully we will not run out for a while. For those of you who want to pick up a kit at the Friedrischaven Hamfest it would help if you could drop me an email with your callsign and the band you want so I can pre-program the keyer chips. It would also be nice to meet and share a drink with any of you Knights who are there. Regards, Steve G0XAR Steve G0XAR

I braved the 100 degree temp today and got my beacon up on the air at about 2230utc(630pm cdt). Freq is about 10.140070 with some instability due to high temp. Beacon is mounted in plastic box at center of dipole. Tx power into a resistive dummy load was 80mw(2volts peak to peak). 5volts dc power is run up to tx through rg59 cable tv coax. Reports welcome. Paul Daulton k5wms beacon k5wms 10.140070mhz qrss 3 intermittent when attended beacon wms 185.3018khz qrss 30 24/7

I found a link to n3zi's site where he has a gen coverage rx kit suitable for 30m beacon op with dds or xtal control. ? I will have to check microprocessor xtals for combo that will cover 10.140. 5.068if and 5.068 injection woiuld give 10.136? tweaking the xtals slightly would bring it up to 10.140 or use spectran which will go up to 5khz. ? comments welcome. Neat kit for $19.95. ? Paul k5wms

Another qrss site that may be of interest is Ralph's, W5JGV, online grabbers. Part 15 rules in the US permit unlicensed operation on 160 to 190 khz with 1 watt input to a 50 ft antenna. ? See http://w5jgv.com/argocaps/? ? This grabber is centered on the "watering hole" at 185.3 khz. ? Daytime my beacon, WMS is often visible via ground wave( we are about 225 miles apart). At night stations up to several hundred miles apart are seen. Operation is qrss 30. ? Best time of course is during winter months but there is propagation year round. Summer thunderstorms anywhere in the propagation area desense the ARGO but we have lots of quiet days. ? Ralph also has a grabber on 137 khz, while not a ham band here in the us , special permission by FCC for experimental licenses has been granted to several US hams. ? For more info on beacon activity go to www.lwca.org? or yahoogroups/part15. ? Thanks for the bandwidth. Paul k5wms

Greetings from sunny England, Those of you who have built the beacon kits will have noticed that we do not use NP0 caps. In fact I cannot remember the last time I used them. Yet these beacons are very, very stable in output frequency as are my other projects. Which makes me wonder if modern caps are much less temperature sensitive than they were in times of yore and question why people still use them. What do you guys think? Regards, Steve G0XAR

As I figured would happen with a freebie website, they deleted my account tonight. No surprise there. So go to: http://www.we0h.us/argo/ and lets see how long that Grabber survives. This is my pay per month site but it had issues with ftp service before, so who knows if it will keep working or fail. -- Mike WE0H EN35hj

Good morning one and all, For those of you who are interested in learning how to program the AT Tiny chip (we use the AT Tiny 13 in the beacon kit) there is an excellent tutorial at :- http://imakeprojects.com/Projects/Tutorial/avr-tutorial It uses the AT Tiny 45 but the example programs will run in the Tiny 13. The code for the beacon is available on Hans's website. 72/3 de Steve...G0XAR

http://www.qsl.net/we0h/argo/ New server once again. Lets see how long this lasts before it locks up... Mike WE0H EN35hj

One of the tricks you can use with ARGO is multiple screens, try and set one screen centered on beacon band, another up 100hz, and another 100hz below. You can set different gains and sensitivity and see which is best, just assign a different folder for each screen. I use \desktop\30mbcn(1,2,3) then put date on next pull down. Set for capture every 15 or 30 minutes and watch band changes. Also note Spectran, Spectrumlab, and ARGO can run simultaniously on the same sound card. Be an experimenter! Paul k5wms

Guys, Just a quick note to say that I will be selling some of the second run of beacon kits at the Friedrischaven hamfest this Friday-Sun. I will be on the SDR-Kits stand Its in the main Hall A1 stall E43. The price will be 12 Euros if you pre-order your kit and provide me with your callsign so I can program your keyer chip before I leave home on Thursday morning. The discount is so i do not have to go through the process of programming the keyers at the rally - its always hectic! If you buy on the day the price will be the regular rally price of 15 Euros. The additional 3 euros goes towards helping towards the cost of the stall. For those of you who cannot make the rally please don't panic. We have enough boards and parts to meet our current and predicted committments and for those of you who have already asked for a kit to be reserved that has been done. When i get back from my holiday, in the second week in July, I will post ordering details here.... Apologies for the delay. Hans and I decided that in order to streamline the process I would program the Keyer chips. So I installed the latest version of the WinAVR/AVR Studio Toolset on my Windows 7 laptop to start work only to discover that Hans had used an earlier version of the compiler and whilst the compilation was clean with the latest version of the compiler the code wouldnt "Beacon". It took us a couple of days to figure out that we needed to revert to the old version of the compiler rather than battle wit the source code. And to think I thought I had left all this stuff behind when i retired from my job in IT. In my day compilers had to cope with legacy code! 72/3 to you all, Steve G0XAR (and Hans G0UPL) -- It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less.

I HAVE CREATED A PHOTO FILE "K5WMS" WITH PHOTOS OF MY BEACON CONSTRUCTION AND INSTALLATION. ALSO INCLUDED ARE CAPTURES FROM KL1X/5 IN BARTLESVILLE,OK AND W4HBK FROM PENSACOLA FL. I AM IN CENTRAL ARKANSAS GRID SQUARE EM34WU. I ALSO HAVE BEEN COPIED BY MIKE WE0H IN ST FRANCIS MN BUT HAVE LOST THE CAPTURE. I EDITED THE CAPTURES AND ADDED THE TEXT. THANKS HANS AND STEVE FOR A FUN PROJECT. THREE DOWN AND 47 TO GO FOR WAS! PAUL DAULTON K5WMS

Can anyone tell me the values of the voltage divider resistors biasing LED varicap in the schematic on this page? http://www.hanssummers.com/qrss/qrsstx.html I think the upper resistor is 33k but have no clue what the grounded one is. 'QBH

Wb4mak es I are at ham radio 2010 in friedrichaffen. Will look for u all. W4QO Jim Stafford www.w4qo.com QRP - When you care enough to send the very least!

Hi All- This week I finally put together the 30m QRSS beacon kit I bought from G0UPL at FDIM. I added a 5v linear regulator to allow operation from a 9V battery, and an LED to show keying activity, and put the whole thing in an Altoids tin. I uploaded some photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveclausen/sets/72157624220009173/ One issue that came up is that I had a hard time getting my oscillator frequency down to 10.140.050 MHz. Initially I couldn't get it below 10.140.220. I removed and re-wound L1 with 38 turns but that only lowered me to about 10.140.100. So I added a 10pF capacitor across C9 and that brought my min frequency down below 10.140.000 (easily raised by tuning C9). Although it seems to work fine now, I'm wondering if I might have created a problem that I'm not aware of, or if the initial high frequency was an indication of a mistake I made during the build. Any thoughts? I hope to put the beacon on the air on Friday night from my club in Brooklyn, NY. This is my first attempt at QRSS and I'm really excited to look for my signal on the grabbers tomorrow. Thanks Hans for a great kit. 72/73, Dave W2VV

I would just like to say thanks to everyone who came to visit us on the stand. I sold about 25 kits which was very satisfying. When I am back from my holiday next week I shall get to work on the remaining orders. Regards, Steve G0XAR

Guys, Hans and I are delighted to announce that the new batch of beacon kits are ready. The pricing is as follows :- Each kit costs ?10, a spare programmed keyer chip is ?2 if ordered with a kit. Postage, payment and packing charges PER KIT are :- Packing in a Jiffy bag from Poundland - ?0.25 First class mail within UK - ?0.66 Airmail within Europe is ?1.31 Airmail Rest of World ?1.82 Paypal 4% of transaction costs. Secure delivery - please ask More than 1 kit? - please ask, we will try to keep post/packing charges to a minimum, How to order:- 1. If you have already given an order to me/Hans you are in the queue, if not please email me at squirrox@... with "Beacon Kit Order" in the subject line. Things I need to know are :- a) The callsign you want programmed into the keyer chip - please note "/" is not permitted at this time b) The band(s) you want, we only do 30, 40 and 80 meters c) How many kits you want. d) If you need a spare programmed keyer chip e) The country you want the kit sent to f) If you need secure delivery 2. I will acknowledge your order and later EMail you when i am ready to ship it to you. I will tell you how much the cost will be. You then pay me by Paypal - sorry but that is the only option for payment we have for now. Put the delivery address in the Paypal instructions. 3. Once Paypal tell me the money is in my account I will ship the kits to you. 4. This seems a bit complicated, but I don't want to take your money then find out we have run out of kits as we did at Dayton and have to get the funds back to you. 5 We are unlikely to run out of kits for a while - I have 130 PCBs in stock and it is easy to get more. 6. The next rally we will be selling at is the GQRP club at Rishworth in October, Pordenone in the spring is a strong possibility.. Er, thats it ...feel free to ask any questions. A new version of the source code for the keyer will be posted on Han's site shortly. It corrects a bug in the "Y" character and allows embedded spaces within callsigns. If there is sufficient interest i will post details of how to program your own keyer on the QRPLabs group. 72/3s from Steve G0XAR, (and Hans G0UPL)

Guys, Hans and I are delighted to announce that the new batch of beacon kits are ready. The pricing is as follows :- Each kit costs ?10, a spare programmed keyer chip is ?2 if ordered with a kit. Postage, payment and packing charges PER KIT are :- Packing in a Jiffy bag from Poundland - ?0.25 First class mail within UK - ?0.66 Airmail within Europe is ?1.31 Airmail Rest of World ?1.82 Paypal 4% of transaction costs. Secure delivery - please ask More than 1 kit? - please ask, we will try to keep post/packing charges to a minimum, How to order:- 1. If you have already given an order to me/Hans you are in the queue, if not please email me at squirrox@... with "Beacon Kit Order" in the subject line. Things I need to know are :- a) The callsign you want programmed into the keyer chip - please note "/" is not permitted at this time b) The band(s) you want, we only do 30, 40 and 80 meters c) How many kits you want. d) If you need a spare programmed keyer chip e) The country you want the kit sent to f) If you need secure delivery 2. I will acknowledge your order and later EMail you when i am ready to ship it to you. I will tell you how much the cost will be. You then pay me by Paypal - sorry but that is the only option for payment we have for now. Put the delivery address in the Paypal instructions. 3. Once Paypal tell me the money is in my account I will ship the kits to you. 4. This seems a bit complicated, but I don't want to take your money then find out we have run out of kits as we did at Dayton and have to get the funds back to you. 5 We are unlikely to run out of kits for a while - I have 130 PCBs in stock and it is easy to get more. 6. The next rally we will be selling at is the GQRP club at Rishworth in October, Pordenone in the spring is a strong possibility.. Er, thats it ...feel free to ask any questions. A new version of the source code for the keyer will be posted on Han's site shortly. It corrects a bug in the "Y" character and allows embedded spaces within callsigns. If there is sufficient interest i will post details of how to program your own keyer on the QRPLabs group. 72/3s from Steve G0XAR, (and Hans G0UPL)

Will Hans be contacting those of us on the waiting list we sent to him?to finalize an order and give us payment information and details , or should we contact him ? ? Thanks , ? Charlie , W5COV