Category: Homebrew

Last summer I cycled a lot from park to park with my IC-705 and telescopic mast, with various experiments in terms of antennas. I have had a lot of fun with this, and will certainly expand this further for next summer season. The only thing I really missed is the simplicity of setting up something…

Last month, I visited the fair in Beetsterzwaag and came across the booth by EPS Antennas. Among their array of intriguing equipment, a +/- 11m telescopic aluminum mast caught my eye. It was a perfect fit for my plans, so I decided to make the purchase. Back home, the excitement of my new acquisition fueled…

  During a field activation I noticed that my 10m 5/8L Vertical occasionally performed poorly. I soon discovered that a solder contact had broken loose. Probably due to transport. With some trickery I was able to temporarily solve this problem. When I got home I soon discovered that there was more going on. The center pin…

In the summer of 2023 I started using a LifePo4 battery. I had made this in a bag for the time being, with all electronics loose in the bag. Of course this will cause problems at some point. To solve this I was looking for a suitable box. The problem with my size battery was…

Portable Setup Upgrades April 2024 I’ve made some additions to my Portable Setup. Auto tuner added, with a wider tune range. BalUn added to work with ladderline. Tuning Aid added. Auto tuner I had owned an ATU-100 tuner for a while. But I had a lot of problems with that. Coils that quickly went into…

Lately I’ve been working a lot with Baluns and UnUn’s and Chokes. I always needed a new housing for that. These are ultimately quite pricey and sometimes difficult to obtain. That’s why I spent an evening drawing. And I have drawn a number of variants of Utility boxes. I print these boxes with PETG filament,…

Updates 17-04-2024: Firmware v0.2 Almost every HF radio from ICOM has a Tuner connector, you know that white 4-pin connector at the back of your radio. Via this connector you can give a command with a switch so that your radio sends out a nice reduced carrier to safely control a tuner. For most 100-200W…

Due to illness I had to enjoy myself a bit at home with the moments when I felt a bit good. I had small projects that were already finished but still needed to be build into an enclosure. The Signal splitter 1 was one of them projects. I once ordered a package of PCBs from…

A while ago I came up with the idea of ​​building a portable ATV receiver. Important features of this receiver had to be: 1. Large screen with real noise (no fake noise) 2. Of course with built-in battery with builtin charger. 3. PE1ICE MiniATV receiver as base. 4. Switchable bias voltage. 12/18V, and OFF. 5.…

I’ve been thinking about setting up a symmetrical antenna system for a while now. That is, Ladder line fed dipole. I did a bit of measuring and was able to stretch 2 x 9m of wire. I bought a new piece of 10m 450ohm ladder line a while ago. This was too long, but before…