NorCal 40A Project
The following pictures annotate my construction of the NorCal 40A CW transceiver.
For more information, see http://www.fix.net/~jparker/wild.html
December 2, 2000
All fixed resistors are installed
Resistor Network and 3 pots added
Some chokes (the big green things)
Now the 5 trimmer caps (also added the three trimmer resistors that I missed before and removed the pots. oops!)
Some Crystals for good measure
Next step are winding coils... they're not so big (shown below them is a quarter).
December 3, 2000
December 4, 2000
Here's the VFO, L9 (59 turns)
December 5, 2000
Rear connectors & rear face plate
Another shot of the rear face plate
Another shot of the front face plate
Construction Complete!
December 6, 2000
Receiver not working so well... no signals. Can't figure out why. Calibrating C1 & C2 did not effect anything. Tracing the circuit indicates no signal from the antenna. No noticable defects on parts between ant & audio out. Need a can of Lucky Testing Potion.
December 7, 2000
Project Complete!
Continued troubleshooting from last night. It just didn't add up until I started moving it and the connections underneath were scratching against the instructions. Noise loud then soft. Tracked it down to a bad connection on L8 (wire next to C47). Resoldered and receiver worked like a champ! Calibrated again and this time C1 & C2 made a very significant difference. Heard signals loud & clear... compared very well to my Sony ICF-2010 with it's whip (40A has a 40m dipole with 2 40m Hamsticks). Those who think CW is dead should listen to 7027-7071 (the frequency range of my unit).
Next step was to tune the transmitter. Got this little blowtorch up to 2 full Watts. Tried a test with a local station (AJ0O) about 7 miles away, but neither of us could hear each other. Not really surprised, since we tried this a while back (I used my Kenwood TS-690AT then) and when the band went long, we lost each other, even cranked up the power to around 100W. The test with the 40A will be done during the day (or should test with someone far away).
If you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop me a line at gregp@n0qds.org
December 22, 2000
New Face Plate So it wasn't 100% complete, but complete enough for me. Received the correct face plate today. NOW it's 100% complete.
Page last modified 1/7/01
