NorCal Feb. 05 Meeting Report
Wow, the alarm sure went off early today. Oh, yeah, its
Sunday and NorCal Meeting day. Also the Super Bowl is today. Hope some guys
show up at the California Burger. I hop out of bed and get ready for the day.
The first thing I have to do is go finish the kits that I need to take to Paul
Maciel today. I’m taking 46 NorCal Keyers, 12 NorCal BLT Tuners, and 11 NorCal
February Kit of the month Kits. The kit for this month is a continuity
tester. I saw where Mike Schettler mentioned on QRP-L that the handiest piece
of test equipment that he used when he built his Steve Weber designed AT3
transceiver was an audible continuity tester. I got on the web, found a good
simple design, and kitted up some for the meeting. We try to have 10 to 12
kits at each meeting that are simple, one evening kits, and sell for about $5
each. So far we have done a kit of the Pipsqueak Regen; Monty Northrup N5ESE’s
Ball Point Pen RF Probe, and this month we did the Continuity Tester designed
by Tony van Roon at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/cntnuity.htm.
I finished up the kits about 9 AM, and got in the truck to
head for the meeting. On the way up to the California Burger, I couldn’t help
but think that there would be a light turnout, and not to get my hopes up too
high. Boy was I wrong!!
One reason that I was so excited to get to the meeting was
that Wayne Burdick, N6KR had called me earlier in the week to tell me that he
was bringing the prototype of the latest Elecraft kit, and was going to
introduce it at the NorCal meeting. He was there, and pictures of the kit are
in this report!!
I got there about 10:45, and the place was buzzing. Wow, look
at the guys here, and look at all of the show and tell stuff. There will be
lots of pictures today. Ok, here we go with the report:
Paul Maciel and Ron Smith with the table of NorCal Goodies.
Ron is looking at the Continuity Tester kit.
A group of happy QRPers doing what they do best at NorCal
meetings. Bob Tellefsen is in the blue cap in the background, and Wayne McFee
is the distinguished looking gentleman in the gray hair and beard.
Jim Pepper, W6QIF proudly displays his article in the latest
issue of QST. Way to go Jim!!
This is Wayne McFee’s 2N20 Transceiver designed by Jim
Kortge with a Uni Counter from December 2000 QST installed. Wayne said the
cost of the adding the counter was about $2.
Here is the Uni-counter in a bread boarded format, again,
built by Wayne McFee.
IK3OIL Frequency counter built by Wayne McFee. This is from
IK3OIL’s web site, and the cost of the counter was about $2, minus the display,
which was about $7. Wayne got the source was www.shopeio.com.
They are located in Gardenia, California.
This is the beginning of an all band transceiver that Wayne is building.
It will use a digital vfo, and he plans to put it on all HF bands.
The receiver is very hot, and Wayne is quite excited about it.
This is Andy, NO6E’s antenna launcher designed by Alan,
WB6ZQZ’s tennis ball launcher. The hard line in the forefront is not part of
the launcher. Andy says that it will shoot a tennis ball well over 100 feet.
He says that it certainly will get a ball over any tree in his yard, and that
is all that he needs.
Andy, NO6E with his “Bazooka” and all of the apparatus
needed to fire it!! As you can see it uses compressed air as a “fuel”.
Bob Miller, WB6KWT’s 2N2-20 designed by Jim Kortge. It has
the Steve Weber digital display in it. Bob built the 2N2-40 first, and like
building Jim’s designs so much that he had to build the 2N2-20. Then when
Steve Weber offered the digital display again, Bob jumped at the chance to add
it to the rig. Bob is from Tracy, CA.
Bob’s 2N2-20 from the top.
A look at the back of the front panel. The Steve Weber
digital display is on the right.
A close up of the digital display board in Bob’s rig.
Bob Miller, WB6KWT proudly holds is 2N2-20 Rig.
What is this? This is the display of a K1EL K-40 Keyboard
Keyer kit. Bob also brought this along to show. The kit sells for about
$35.00 and is available from K1EL.
Here is Bob’s complete Keyer complete with keyboard. I was
amazed at how well it works.
Ed Laughery, AD5JV from Baton Rouge, LA was a guest at the
meeting. He was in the area on business, and stopped by. Paul Maciel had met
Ed earlier this month while in Baton Rouge on business and invited him to the
meeting!! Ed is a great guy. Wait until you see what he did at the meeting.
This is Ed on the phone, calling N5IB, Jim Giammanco from
the meeting. Paul and I got to say hello to Jim, and Ed rubbed it in a little
bit that he was at the meeting, grin.
Remember the phasing sideband rig that Bob Okas was working
on? Well, he had it at the meeting, and it looks sharp.
The top view of Bob Okas, W3CD’s Phasing SSB Rig
Dick Palmer and Samarai Sam came up from LA to attend the
meeting. Dick brought along the 2 GQ transceiver kits that he bought at the
Jim Cates Estate sale. Marvelous work. One was on 20 meters, and the other
was on 40 meters.
The view under the hood of Dick’s rig. Sure is a lot of
parts for a single band rig.
Last month we gave away some N5ESE designed RF Probe kits.
Here is the one built by Song Kang.
Dick Palmer and Song Kang at the meeting discussing QRP.
Ron Smith holding his N5ESE RF Probe.
A close up view of Ron’s RF Probe. The probe tip is a brass
dissecting needle.
Mike Furman couldn’t pass up this great buy on a solar panel
and controller. He picked it up at Weird Stuff, a local surplus store.
The newest Elecraft kit was announced at the meeting by none
other than Wayne Burdick, N6KR. It is the T1, which is the world’s smallest
automatic antenna tuner. It uses a self contained 9V battery that Wayne
says will last more than a year!! We saw it first at the NorCal meeting. Check the
Elecraft web page at www.elecraft.com
for more details soon!!
A better picture of the Elecraft T1 Tuner Kit.
The “under the hood” look at the tuner. Is Wayne amazing or what?
This is the “smart cable” that will be available to connect
the tuner to the Yaesu 817!! Guys, this tuner will work with any qrp rig. In
fact, it will work up to 20 Watts. I asked Wayne, will it work with an 817,
Yes, A Sierra, Yes, A NorCal 40, Yes, An all band homebrew rig? Yes. A Ten Tec
515? Yes. Any Qrp rig will work with this tuner. I hope that they make a lot
of them, because this is gonna be a hot seller.
Whew!!! There you have it. Another great meeting. Lots of
stuff going on. And I was worried about attendance? You gotta be kidding.
Qrpers are the best hams around, they never let you down. Until next month,
72, Doug, KI6DS
