Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Awwww .... what do those Hams know, anyway?

Finally, an article about what we've been saying for months now.... the new Sunspot cycle is taking its good ol' sweet time getting here!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609124551.htm

Also, as embarrassed as I am to admit this, my ATS3, which I just finished building .... ain't working. Boo, hiss! The DDS works fine as I get the friendly Morse Code announcement on power up that all is well with the little rig's brain. However, the receiver isn't working.

The SA612 chips have all the right voltages on them; but when I measure the voltages on the AGC chips, the V+ supply of 5V drops down to 2.7V. Something is seriously bringing down the supply voltage. I've gone over the soldering with a fine toothed comb looking for solder bridges, and I've double checked component placement. All seems OK in those regards.

I'm leaning right now towards the theory that I have a malfunctioning component somewhere that's causing the voltage drop. I hate like heck to start removing SMT devices looking for a bad component; but I may have to resort to that soon.

All I can say is ...... NUTS!

73 de Larry W2LJ

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