Fortunately, our home survived Michael fairly well and we have moved back in. I must start over with outside antennas because the trees came down. Actually, it will be easier to work amateur satellites from the backyard.
I have picked up some vintage treasures from eBay including an original Ameco AC-1. I also have an SDRPlay RSP-2 Software Defined Radio that I have not found a good use. So why not use the Ameco AC-1 to transmit and The RSP-2 for receive. I will need a transmit/receive switch to keep from damaging the SDR. For that, I am using an MFJ 1708B RF Sense SDR Receiver TR Switch. I am letting it switch on RF sense. The AC-1 is set up for 40 meters and uses crystals to set the frequency. I get four watts RF out.
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| Ameco AC-1 |
Being rock bound or crystal controlled can be challenging because pretty much you have to call CQ at 4 watts or get lucky that a station calling CQ is close enough to the crystal frequency to hear you. However, I happen to have a 7.123 MHz crystal which is the frequency for the daily Sun Rise CW net. The
SRN net is friendly to all check-ins. They will remember you between check-ins and chat a bit. I QNIed this morning using the AC-1/SDR combo. I got a report of 339 but the NCS, K4AXF in Virginia, copied all my info and repeated it for the net.
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| SDR Play RSP-2 in the foreground. |
I enjoy the glow of the 6V6 and the 6X5 tubes just like the novices did for their first QSO .way back when. You know the RSP-2 is a pretty good receiver for a little over one hundred dollars. I am using the free HDSDR software on my laptop. You could homebrew some transmitters and use the RSP-2 for the receiver. You can't monitor your transmitted CW with it because the SDR latency will throw you off. I need a mute circuit for an external speaker so I don't have to mute the speaker myself.
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| The MFJ SDR TR Switch |
My antenna was my 30 ft horizontal, and 20 ft vertical loop fed a the bottom center. The lower wire is ten feet above the ground. Hurricane Michael took all my trees I used for antenna support. So this loop that I constructed for Field Day comes in handy. It uses three 31 ft Jackite poles for support. I already had an SGC tuner just outside the house back wall. I ran 300-ohm balanced feedline between the loop and the tuner. The antenna tunes nicely on 40, 30, 20, 17, and 15 meters.
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| The Field Day loop comes in handy after Hurricane Michael. It replaces the 132-foot doublet I had in the trees. Now no trees. |
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| HDSDR software on the laptop |
BTW, I used VIZ Isotap II Isolation and switched autotransformer to avoid getting shocked. I am not sure if it was necessary, but I did it anyway. If you are wondering I have several AC-1s. This one is an original and worked on the first try.
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| VIZ isolated autotransformer |
