Here is the first extended QSO of the Furlough 40 (and the 4th contact ever). As a reminder the Furlough 40 is a 100% homebrew transceiver based on the SimpleSSB designed by N6QW, Pete Juliano and built by me - with much coaching from Pete and occasional help and advice from my brother Chris, W6CS. Both of them are in California and I am in Virginia - so a first QSO with either of them was not in the cards. When I scheduled this QSO I had no idea if I would be heard at all.
This QSO is with my friend Don, KM4UDX. What makes it even better is that I worked Don on his highly customized, homebrew enhanced uBitx, with which has taken Don to the top of the WSPRNet leader board. Homebrew to homebrew.
So this was great fun. Have a look and a listen:
Coaxing the rig to life board by board has been a great experience. Pete's guidance was to build one module at a time, starting with the audio amplifier and that forms the test bed for the next module. That proved to be great advice when debugging the latter stages. I was warned by my other Elmer, N2CQR, Bill Meara that when I got to the final amplifier I would be entering "a world of woe" and it did take a week or so to shake out - with each day starting out with a promise that "this will be the day..." and each evening ending with "perhaps tomorrow..." But gradually the bugs got fixed, the errors corrected and the rig is on the air.
The rig is on the air but not finished. Next step will be going through the modules board by board to see if I can get closer to Pete's 5 watt specification. And then there are a few final touches I need to complete. I need wire up the tune circuit add a few more controls and build a proper front panel. And at some point think about moving it to an enclosure - or maybe not.
But at the moment, I don't want to touch a thing!
As a Scoutmaster of many years I frequently had to remind my Scouts to take a moment and look back at the mountain they had just climbed. This picture with the storied Michigan Mighty Mite, a 7 component first homebrew project, was taken exactly four months ago on December 22, 2019
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| Testing the Michigan Mighty Mite - 4/22/2019 |
Dean
KK4DAS
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