Fuchs L2/L1

It was nice to find out that the appointment that I thought I had for tonight, is actually for tomorrow night. So I had a little time to spend continuing on with the construction of my Fuchs tuner by QRP Project. I used the time to wind the first toroid, L2/L1.



It wasn't as difficult as it looked from the manual; but I have to admit, I "cheated" a bit. The QRP Project folks supply really nice copper colored enameled wire for winding the toroids. Winding L2/L1 involves winding 7 turns and then with another piece of wire, another 7 turns interspersed between the first 7 turns. Personally for me, trying to do all that with the same color wire would probably lead to mistakes. Fortunately, I have spools of red enameled wire! I picked some of the same thickness and used red for the second set of windings (even though it's not easy to tell from the photo, there ARE actually two different colors of wire there). This way, I am positive that the taps (the wires with the looped ends) fall perfectly between the each of the first 7 turns.

Mama didn't raise no dummy !!!

All I have to do now, is to make sure I don't cut the wires too short before soldering them to the various points on the switches and jacks of the tuner. The second toroid will probably get wound either tomorrow night after I get home, or Thursday night. That toroid is about 50+ turns on the same sized toroid as above, with about 3 different taps at various points of the winding. That should be a relatively easy task.

A few weeks ago, around Easter time, I promised to post a picture of my finished Jackson Harbor Press LC Meter kit. We had left our digital camera at my wife's brother's house who we had visited for Easter. We got it back and below is the photo. I mounted the kit in one of the clear top boxes offered by the 4 States QRP Group. As you can see, it is overkill, but I can fit the required 9V battery in there with room to spare - plus there is more than enough room for the two attached test leads. The circuit board and piezo buzzer are mounted using a 3M product that is a lot like Velcro - but yet not quite the same. One side is sticky, so it stays permanently mounted to the tin (as well as the back of the buzzer and the circuit board). The other side (the business side) has what I can only describe as "grabby fingers" which acts a lot like Velcro. But there are no "hooks" and "loops". The "grabby fingers" stick to each other like Velcro; but you only need to buy one roll of this material - not two.




I went down the basement to take another look at the stuff and it is called "3M Dual Lock". I like this product a lot. It's not only good for mounting small circuit boards and the like inside enclosures. I also have used it to mount my Amateur Radio map of the world to the wall without having to resort to tacks or nails. I am going to have to pick up another roll next time I am at the hardware store.

72 de Larry W2LJ