Monday, May 10, 2010

Adventures in building

If you followed my blog and the PFR3A build with any interest; then I have another for you. No, it's not one of my builds .... I won't put you through another run of my trials and tribulations! This time I offer you the chance to watch the efforts of a much more skilled and courageous builder than I, Guy N7UN.

I added Guy's blog to the blogroll about a week ago. It's titled N7UN Adventures and Ham Radio Activities. It's a great blog by a Ham who is very much into portable QRP operations. But in addition to his regular postings, Guy is chronicling his progress in building one of Steve Weber's ATS-4 transceivers. It is a separate page located off the main blog; and it is titled, appropriately enough, "My ATS-4 Build Project". Click on the title and it will take you right there.

So far, it looks like Guy is making great progress and I expect he will have his new transceiver built in "no time". The ATS-4 is supposed to be the next step up from the ATS-3B which had phenomenal success; and was extremely popular. I am sure that Guy will have a superb transceiver when all is said and done.

SMT building is not the easiest; but at the same time, not the hardest. It's just different. If you have some kitbuilding or homebrewing experience; and you've been thinking about taking the SMT plunge, then be sure to follow Guy's progress.

On another note, I recently purchased a new NiMH battery for my Alinco DJ-V5 off of eBay. I got it at a real good price - less than $35 - and got it through the mail last Friday. I charged it up and have had it powering my handheld since. So far it has lasted through three days of monitoring (not too much transmitting) and am pleased. And it looks like it still has a good amount of juice left in it before it will need to hit the charger again. So it looks like I have two good batteries for the 144/440 MHz HT and two good batteries for the 144/220 MHz HT. Looks like I will be in "handheld heaven" for the next while to come.

72 de Larry W2LJ

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