NJ6N’s Amateur Radio & Electronics Blog
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Full Duplex Repeater Linking
Many years ago, SOARA Repeater and Technical folk fabricated 19″ rack shelves that contained Motorola Mitrec radios that were modified for full duplex operation. The shelves were fitted with “flat pack” band reject duplexers and hardline to interconnect them to the radios. The UHF linking band was monitored for some time using an Icom PCR-1000…
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More Fun with 3D Printing
I continue to be amazed at how much you can do with 3D printing technology. When I need an enclosure for something, it’s really nice to be able to design the perfect fit for my project. When a part breaks, I can often design and print a 3D part to replace it. 3D printing is…
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Hendricks BITX20A SSB Transceiver Kit
Many years ago, circa 2007, I bought a Hendricks Bitx 20A, 20 meter QRP SSB transceiver kit at the Pacifcon conference in San Ramon, CA. I bought the main kit along with the machined and painted Ten Tec case and KD1JV digital frequency display kit. I figured I would build it over a holiday break…
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Ultimate 3 WSPR/QRSS Transmitter
Way back in 2016 I purchased a QRP multi-protocol transmitter kit from QRP Labs (https://qrp-labs.com). I believe my thinking was that SOARA could use this to replace the clubs K6LLL memorial 10 meter beacon at Temple Hill. The current K6LLL beacon consists of a BASIC Stamp microcontroller that generates the keying for a Radio Shack…
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PowerPole Distribution Box
I’ve designed and built several different Anderson PowerPole distribution boxes over the years. Recently I found a design by KM6RW on Thingiverse for a “Decora” style PowerPole distribution panel that fits into a standard electrical outlet box. It can be installed in the wall or on the surface. I sliced the STL using Cura and…
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Building an svxLink station
Components Preparation Installing & Configuring svxLink pi@raspberrypi:~$ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****card 0: seeed2micvoicec [seeed-2mic-voicecard], device 0: bcm2835-i2s-wm8960-hifi wm8960-hifi-0 [bcm2835-i2s-wm8960-hifi wm8960-hifi-0]Subdevices: 1/1Subdevice #0: subdevice # pi@raspberrypi:~ $ arecord -L…sysdefault:CARD=seeed2micvoicec…hw:CARD=seeed2micvoicec,DEV=0
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MultiMode Digital/Analog Repeater
Recently, I built a full duplex repeater that supports FM, Yaesu System Fusion, DMR, and D-STAR all on one frequency pair. Like many SOARA members, I use an MMDVM hot spot for digital modes. My new repeater is essentially a full duplex hot spot using a MMDVM (multi mode digital voice modem) board as the…
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SvxLink Powered Pi Zero Communicator
Summary: For about $30 US, you can have a Raspberry Pi based EchoLink/SvxLink node. All it takes is a Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero 2, 3, etc. and and Pi Audio Hat. With a little more work, you can use an inexpensive USB Audio dongle for the audio interface. I recently acquired some new Raspberry Pi…
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Fun with Djspot
Darren, G7LWT sent me a Djspot FM transceiver board for the Raspberry Pi to experiment with. The board is used to create an FM “hotspot” that provides access to other svxlink or EchoLink nodes via the Internet. You can use an HT to communicate through the hotspot on a simplex FM channel. DTMF codes control…
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San Clemente Repeater Upgrades
At the SOARA San Clemente repeater site, the ACC RC-850 repeater controller has been replaced with an Audio Test Solutions (Formerly Link Communications) RLC-4 controller. By standardizing on RLC controllers, we have simplified our ongoing maintenance. The common platform will also allow us to standardize repeater commands for our users. The EchoIRLP Echolink/IRLP node computer…
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