New Steam Radio/s

I attended the 2007 Friedrichshafen AmateurFunkMesse (HamFest or radio rally) on the Saturday.  I actually went on the Friday but it was already closed.  We toured around the halls and found the Ham Camp with many motor homes and caravans and even tents, covered in various call signs, club signs and of course aerials.  All fairly interesting.

We were on a motorbike tour of the Alps and also visited Munich to see friends.  I set the date of our holiday to coincide with the rally and my German XYL sorted out a private room for us to stay in in the vicinity.  All the hotels, pensions and B&Bs were already booked before we decided to go to the rally but my XYL knows how to find private rooms through some kind of accommodation network.

I managed to get there at about 11, after dropping the XYL off at the station to go and do some painting further around the coast of Bodensee (lake Constance).  

It was my first radio rally so I had no idea of what to expect.  I went

into hall A1 and looked at all the stalls.  Waters and Stanton were

there and I looked at their range of automatic aerial tuners and was

recommended the cheapest by a French ham who already had one.  I almost bought it but decided to look around some more.  I came across a stand featuring telescopic black PVC masts and various aerials for mounting on them.  I was rather attracted to this idea as I thought it would enable me to go portable with my motorbike.  Again I almost bought but carried on...  I saw several interesting bits of test equipment but it was all rather expensive.  I visited the RSGB and ARRL stalls and bought a back garden aerial book and a CD with all of the 2006 QST magazines on.  I signed up for a draw at BARC, the Irish ballooning and amateur radio club and received a free chocolate.  I ate the sandwiches my XYL had kindly provided (ham sandwiches!) and chatted to some German hams.  I found the same automatic aerial tuner on a German stall at a cheaper price and, after discussing its merits with a German ham (and torturing him with my terrible German), this time actually bought it!  After visiting almost all the stalls I came to the conclusion that the whole rally could be visited in a few, maybe four, hours.  Why had people come here for two or even three days?!

I saw an interesting loop aerial and heard some Brits discussing it I

asked them if there was another hall.  They looked at me amazed and told me that this was only a quarter of the rally and that most of it was in the B section, a further three halls.  I set off immediately!

After managing to find the B section I entered the first of the halls

and saw that it was full of stalls consisting of rectangular

arrangements of trestle tables covered with mainly used equipment,

components, tools and tat.  The first stall I stopped at was run by a

Brit who told me the other two halls were very similar.  He also told me not to buy anything from any of the many Russian stalls until Sunday because the Russians did not want to take anything back to Russia with them because they had to pay tax on it.

I wandered around the halls, buying as few and as small things as

possible, because we had to fit into our already full luggage and ride about a thousand miles back to Swindon, England with it.  Unfortunately I seemed to have forgotten this at some point and purchased a cheaper version of the telescopic mast and an oscilloscope tube!  I also purchased valve sockets, large value electrolytics, switches, digital panel meters and various other useful and cheap items for my shack.  I had written a shopping list before I went but unfortunately could find very little of what I wanted.  I made up for this by finding other interesting and useful items such as cheap PL259 plugs, large 7-seg LEDs for 20 cents, a small but stacked valve chassis, a huge tuning knob, very powerful LASER LEDs and other goodies.

I stopped for a cup of coffee and a slice of cake at one of the several little restaurants inbetween the halls.  The prices were reasonable.  Kaffee und Kuchen, €3.50 - about £2.20.

I managed to get round all the rest of the stalls stalls just as they closed the rally, at 6pm.  I then went and found my XYL who was busy trying to paint the lake.

Next day we visited the Zeppelin airship and also the Dornier aircraft museums.  Hmmm, tasty!

Well, I passed...!

Passed what?

The Intermediate exam!

Oh.  Well done then.  WHat does it let you do that is different to the m3 licence?

Well, I can now transmit using higher power but, more importantly for me, I can transmit using my own home-built transmitters!  Hoorah!  I built a variable radio frequency oscillator for the Intermediate exam practical and amplified it.  Now I can add a further power stage (12al8?) and connect it to a wire thingy and see if I can reach somebody, or at least annoy the neighbours - all legally!

I tried applying online at the OFCOM website for my new licence but the bloody pile of poo wouldn't even let me log in.  It really is useless.  I'll resort to using the old-fashioned telephone.  Apparently you get an additional call sign and keep the m3 one.  Strange...  Still, they might have that special one available.

Now studying hard-ish for the full "Advanced" licence on the 21st of July.  In for a penny, in for a pound.

I managed to get my Intermediate licence call-sign out of Ofcom today.  They really do have a dreadful website.  I thought it might have been due to using a Mac but my PC at work had similar problems.  It's just plain rubbish.  When I called them for help they apologised for over a minute about it.  In the end they did everything manually.  What a technological marvel, the telephone!

I am now 2E0NJP which are my initials ("NJP").  J is John.

Re-reading my previous post I see that I am repeating myself.  Well, that's true to form.  "Shut up Nick!".  Oh, OK.

Thanks to Derek from the club, I now have a three-gang air-spaced variable capacitor!  I can start to plan my next valve radio with RF-stage.  I will make it one that covers the 1.81-2MHz and  3.5-3.8MHz bands, to match my fledgling transmitter.

Back to studying...

Well, I passed my Advanced Licence exam, yeehaa!  400Watts of RFI...!  I received the letter yesterday and managed to navigate the OFCOM website to get my new vanity callsign m0NjP (my initials) and the licence itself.  I think that is almost as hard as the more obscure exam questions.

I have started on a simple 12V valve SSB transmitter, using the VFO and buffer amplifier I built for my Intermediate practical assessment, but I am having a bit of trouble with the balanced modulator (trifilar wound toroid with two diodes).  I suspect the toroid maybe too inductive for the anode load of my 7MHz IF xtal oscillator's buffer amplifier.  More experimentation is required.  I might try a different type of toroid - any suggestions?

I have finished my valve superhet (for the time being).  I was going to experiment with putting 455KHz ceramic filters inbetween the two IF stages but have shelved that whilst I work on my Tx.  www.pettefar.eu/2e0NjP  I had a lot of trouble with shorts between the vanes on the air-spaced variable capacitor and ended up changing it for another and re-winding the coils to match.  I might experiment with spraying insulating lacquer onto the vanes to prevent them from shorting.

I recently built an old Howes 40M RcRx that I bought from an SK sale at the club into a nice box.  (It was in a terrible state before.)  Does anyone know of a deserving cause for it?  Maybe a new young/poor member?  It is self-contained (I put 8 AA batteries inside it) and very sensitive.  It picks up morse well.

I have received the DARC's DIPIT (high-tech grid dip meter ) kit I sent off for ages ago.  There are an awful lot of parts!  It comes with quite a large aluminium housing that is unpainted and a bit rough so any suggestions for a finish would be gratefully accepted.  Does anyone have any Hello Kitty sticky-back plastic?

I found some paint that is suitable for use on steel and a nice shade of blue (I don't have any blue kit yet).  I managed to set up a suitable place to paint the metal parts of the DIPIT and duly applied the paint as per the instructions.

The finished result is Awful!  Really bad!  Ah well.  I hope it looks a bit better when it's put together.

I have made a fairly good voltage controlled oscillator using a pentode and a varicap and now I need a sawtooth oscillator to vary it continuously with.  I bought some 2d21 thratron gas-filled tetrodes from someone in Canada over eBay and have been experimenting with them using 12V HT.  I had to provide a 6V heater supply and decided to make a bench 6V heater power supply from a Maplins 6V mains transformer.  This is where I came across the problem with a secondary transformer output voltage marking not being very indicative of the actual output.  In this case the transformer gave out 7V RMS which is a bit high for a 6.3V heater.

I have now managed to create a sawtooth oscillator with a 12.5V HT.  I hope to get it down to 12.0V with a bit more fiddling.

I "won" an Eddystone 888A Ham receiver on eBay from a nice chap in Stroud.  My missus' work colleague who lives in Stroud collected it for me and it now is part of my "shack" and works well with a random length wire aerial and earth.  I have managed to track down some International Octal plugs and when they arrive will make an S-meter from an old Eddystone circuit diagram.

My missus, the XYF (Young Frau) Agnes, is studying for her Foundation licence.  A lot of the information she remembers from school.  I have been helping her, as much as one can help one's nearest and dearest.  The exam is on Saturday!

I wonder if m3XYF is available?