Veronica 1W FM Transmitter

I Made the transmitter about a month ago and im not using it as much these days, so i will write about it after the month of building and using. I chose to build this transmitter mainly because that there were alot of discusuions about it in forums  and that the circuit for this transmitter had a PCB image attached to it  really was easy not to screw something up when desiging your own pcb design. The very first time i made this board it turned out mirrored. Because i was inexperienced i desided to start all over and get it right.

Before building it i had to find all the substitute parts for the circuit because half of the parts used on the original one doesnt seem to exist anymore.
Instead of the BC548 transistors i used BC547 . Instead of the BF494 i used BF199.  Instead of the power transistor 2N4427 i used a 2N3866.  I substituted the D1 double varicap KV1310 with a BB204  and everything is working. Sucess! Very first times i turned it on i tought it wasnt working because the LED just wouldnt work. It turned out that i was using too low voltage to make the tuning easy. On 12 volts 1 amp the LED just wouldnt light up strong enought for me to notice that im tuning. Next time i gave it 13-14 volts and you could really see the LED glowing bright, then i could tune it properly to a desired frequency. All the coils were made from 1mm copper wire formed on the required size drill bits . When touching anything it  frequency remains stable . The range i got from it wasnt very amazing, but i wasnt even pulling a watt, you need about 15 16 volts for that.

Making this cost me about 50 Litas (~15 euro) . Building it was great fun . Power transistor, varicap and BF199's had to be ordered in my local shop. The power transistor came all the way from germany!
If you do find yourself making one of these and you come across some trouble feel free to ask me here i will be happy to help you with it. I was pretty lost when i had to pick the right substitutes but here , i did it. I had it on without any antenna on 12 volts several times and the thing didint burnout or exploded. People said to me that this circuit is over-complex  and has way too much parts for such a homemade device. They might be right but when i looked for a circuit to make i found none that had a pcb image ready for me to print and make. An RF amplifier for this would be nice!

F-22 Scratch built Rc plane

Few days ago i made this plane : http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=740049
And here is what i got. The construction of the thing is dead simple. Before i got the thing into the air i crashed it several times because the cg was way off. This is the 24 inch version. My friend made the bigger one and the cg was somewhere by the motor mount, on this one turns out it had to be much further to the nose.

 I used a 30amp ESC , a hextronik 3000kv 24 gram  motor , 6x4 prop , 1000mah 2 cell battery, HXT 9 gram servos. This kind of setup is way too weak for such a plane. To make it stay in the air i have to give more than half throttle. I guess the battery should be 3 cell or the motor kv is bit too high .  I bought every single part from hobbyking by the way.


When in the air i cant do any kind of acrobatics with such a weak thrust, also the thing is loud as hell, all the dogs start to bark around the neighbourhood when give it full throttle.


All in all its not a keeper for me with such rc gear i have for a plane right now, but it is fun to fly, it looks really awesome when passing by your head.

Bangkok, Thailand meteo radio on 8743khz

Caught this in  2012 07 19 2000z accidentally scanning around with the long wire connected

Useful radio and transmitters related links

While gathering info on how to make transmitters i stumbled upon all kinds of websites about radio with allot of useful information.

http://www.hfunderpants.com/
http://priyom.org/
http://www.udxf.nl/
http://www.hfunderground.com
http://freeradiotx.blogspot.com/
http://www.sm7ucz.se/KRAS/KRAS.htm
http://danyk.wz.cz
http://ebookbrowse.com/7mhz-cw-am-qrp-transmitter-2-pdf-d155417007
http://www.qrz.lt/ly2bok/Konstrukcijos/Konstr%20turinys.htm
http://kd1jv.qrpradio.com/
http://www.gameangler.eu/delboy/m0dad/main_page.htm
http://www.elektronika.ba/schematics/
http://www.vhfdx.info
http://www.talkingelectronics.com/te_interactive_index.html

Pixie 2 CW QRP Transmitter

I have tried making the Pixie 2 QRP transmitter on a perfboard and it didint work , i designed my own pcb for it and it didint work. Maybe it had something to do with me using BC547 as the two transistors required in the schematic or i could just have made a mistake in the design. Because i had all the parts for Pixie 2 laying around i googled around and found this nice website http://www.circuitswamp.org/projects/pixie2.html   . It has a very nice pcb design and clear instructions, so i made it with BC547 as Q2 and  for Q1 i used a random RF transistor i salvaged from somewhere, for the L2 i wound 8 turns around a FT50 ferrite ring . My pcb turned out mirrored (my mistake) so i had to bend the legs of the LM386 chip all the way to make it work on a mirrored pcb.
And it works! I have no idea what is the output power on this thing. And when listening on headphones you cant hear a single signal. I read that pixie 2 receiver is deaf, but it could be that there is not much activity on 3578khz (crystal freq) . If you want to know how it works read the text in circuitswamp.org link i gave  because im not an expert on these things. Wonder if its possible to make a contact with this thing here where i live.

Hello

Hello my name is Linas. I live in Lithuania. I have alot of hobbies and i thought that making a blog to keep track of things that i make, made and want to make creating a blog would be a great idea. I love listening to shortwave radio, i like fishing, cycling, making pcb's and electronics in general, pyrotechnics , flying radio controlled airplanes also making them, photography. Recently i got interested  about making all sorts of transmitters, still low power. When i think about it i cant name all of all the hobbies i have and things i like.

Have a complimentary bird