Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Feeling chirpy

Not without some difficulty due to my shaking hands, I managed to modify my copy of Roger G3XBM's XBM-10-2 two transistor transceiver for 10m to his latest version. It is now named the "Chirpy" for reasons that will become obvious when you hear one on the air.

My version is exactly the same as Roger's except that R3 is a trimpot not a fixed resistor. This allows me to adjust the power output to what I want. I am getting 150mW output on a 13.8V supply, this drops to 50mW with a 9V power source.

So far I have yet to make a contact with the little rig. I have called CQ on 28.060 many times but my signal is yet to be spotted on the Reverse Beacon Network. I don't know if that is because my signal is too weak or too chirpy for decoding by the skimmer stations. Or perhaps the skimmers don't receive that far up the 10m band. I will probably have to arrange a sked with a local station who is near enough to hear me.

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