Global Pirate HF Weekend 14-15.1.2012.  This station lists pirate SW radio stations that it expects to be on the air this weekend. They include one using the callsign WEMP. Look for it between 15.005 – 15.095 MHz. They’ll be broadcasting with 100 W to Europe: 12.00 – 16.00 UTC – (check 15.010 or 15.040 or 15.090 MHz).

The Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories Zener Diode Tutorial. Confused about zener diodes and how they work? Read this.

Monitor your Ham Radio transmitter with an oscilloscope. In this video, Alan, W2AEW builds a little adapter that lets you connect your transmitter output to a scope input so that you can see how clean its output is.

Just before the first of the year, the ARRL unveiled its DIY campaign. It mostly consists of the video below, but there’s also a flier designed to be a hand-out to go along with the video. A PowerPoint presentation and speaker’s notes also are available, as well as ‘Ask Why I DIY with Ham Radio’ buttons.

CQ  magazine is also jumping on the bandwagon. They recently annnounced that they will run a quarterly “Maker” column, written by Matt Stultz, KB3TAN. Stultz is the founder of “HackPittsburgh,” a “hackerspace” or community workshop for makers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has been a ham since 2009 and has integrated amateur radio into many of HackPittsburgh’s activities.

Stultz’s first column, titled “We Are Makers,” will appear in the March issue of CQ. It provides a general introduction to the maker/hacker community for hams, as well as a description of a high-altitude balloon project that brought the two groups together in Pittsburgh.

• Gauging Ruggedness In RF Power Transistors. This article, written by editor Jack Browne, who is himself a ham, covers some of the new power transistors on the market. Some of them are capable of withstanding VSWRs on the output of up to 65:1!
• The Radio Link: A Tutorial. This series of articles is a bit heavy on math for most radio amateurs, but the point of the series is to think of radio communication as a system whose behavior can be predicted. Thinking about how we use radio in this way could help us to become better radio amateurs.

And here’s something entirely out of left field. Scientists have published a paper that shows that random noise can actually make signals clearer. The process is called stochastic resonance, and while the article doesn’t explain the theory in much depths, and I’m not sure that it’s something that’s applicable to radio communication, it seems like it might be something to look into.

Are you ready for a useful tool that you can assemble with a hammer? I came up with this after I got tired of chasing around PCBs on the bench top during construction and testing. I have one of those gimbaled pcb vises, but it takes up too much room on the bench.

This is perfect for secure holding of PCBs during soldering, prototyping, and testing. A dovetail groove prevents any slipping of the board from the fixture, with minimal clamping pressure. The jaw opening will easily accommodate and securely hold boards from 1/4-in. to 5-in., easily extended with longer rods. The jaws are fabricated from UHMW, (ultra-high-molecular- weight polyethylene), rods are Nylon. Easily replaceable elastic band for many years of service.

All the details are here for anyone wanting to build one, or there is a complete kit of machined parts ready for assembly, now available. The kit costs $23.

Radio tutorial – building your first station. This YouTube video tutorial by N7FTP gives some good advice on setting up your first ham shack.

Wi-Fi and the Bad Boys of Radio (review). I haven’t yet read this book, but this review certainly makes me want to do so. The book was written by Alex Hills, who played a part in the development of WiFi technology.  Alex, AL7K, got his start in radio as a ham radio operator. From there, he went on to broadcast engineering, and then to a position with Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked on WiFi technology.

Radio hams pick up Mars rover Curiosity’s signals. This story describes how some German amateurs are working with NASA to receive telemetry from the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, which is heading towards Mars carrying a one-ton nuclear powered robot rover named Curiosity.

Buy something between now and December 16, 2011, spend at least $25, and I’ll pick up the shipping on the whole order. As the holidays approach, it would be a great time to pick up a great gift or two. Just mention or enter Offer Code RED11312M.

The fine print reads:

This offer cannot be combined with any offer. Free shipping is limited to orders for stocked products that can ship by December 16, 2011. You must place an order for $25, select the “least expensive” shipping method upon check out and enter or mention your one-time offer code. Free shipping is limited to shipments within the continental US.

Do you have any projects in the works that you need parts for?

Texas Instruments has a number of videos on their website that will give you a better idea why this is a good idea. They’re mostly designed to sell you their ESD protection devices, but unless you’re designing electronic systems, you can mostly ignore the sales pitch.

I’m happy to say that that tradition continues today. This month’s meeting, which took place on Wednesday evening, was the 2011 episode of construction night. This year, we built the Sure PS-LP11111 5~16 VDC Linear DC Voltage Power Supply Kit.

The Sure PS-LP11111 5~16 VDC Linear DC Voltage Power Supply Kit isn't a complete power supply, but the addition of a cheap AC wall wart makes it one.

This kit met all my criteria for a club construction project:

• It was inexpensive. PartExpress sold me 15 of them for $9 each.
• It was easy to build. As you can see from the photo above, the kit has less than 20 parts. It took me less than a half hour to build, and most of the club members had theirs put together in less than 45 minutes.
• Those that built it have something useful that they can actually use in their shacks.  I plan to use mine to power the little QRP radio kits that I’ve built over the years. This thing should easily supply an amp at 9 V or 12 V.

As I said, this was a real success. So much so, that several of our club members said that we should do this more often. We even discussed other projects that might we might want to tackle.

One final note: Only one of our kit builders had any problem with his kit. Despite pointing out that the electrolytic capacitor, full-wave bridge, and the LED were polarized and had to be inserted properly, this fellow managed to insert his electrolytic capacitor in backwards. It worked for about two minutes before the capacitor exploded with a loud bang. We all got a big kick out of this because this fellow happened to be one of most experienced hams. :)

The KC5FM Daily. Paper.li is a website that lets you turn Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds into online newspapers in just a few clicks. Here’s KC5FM’s paper.

‘UHF’ Connector Test Results. This blog post by John Huggins (I couldn’t find his callsign anywhere on the website) shows the results of his UHF connector tests. He also compares their characteristics to other types of RF connectors. Huggins says,

The stunning result is all the UHF connectors in the test have worse performance than all the other connectors. One immediate conclusion concerning ‘UHF’ connectors is they will function at these higher frequencies, but one must decide if using the PL259 or SO239 is worth it in an age where its deficiencies have been made moot by ALL connector designs since WWII.

Prywatna Wytwórnia Lamp, where DIY meets vacuum electron devices. This blog post describes another guy–this one in Poland–who makes his own vacuum tubes.

Google+ is a lot better site for ham-radio social networking than Facebook.  Give it a try and join us.