Amateur(Ham) Radio

Newly Licensed

When I was a child we would get to go visit our cousins in the summer and would get to see them again at our grandmothers for Christmas. We always had a great time and wanted to visit more often, but we lived to far apart, and a phone call was long distance (read expensive). My cousin came up with the idea that we should get amateur radio licenses. We never did but I learned a lot studying the materials we were able to gather, and I always remained interested.

I was an electrical engineer by profession but spent almost my entire carrier in digital (computer) electronics. A once new job at Sonavation required that I work on some analog circuits. I enjoyed the experience and learned a lot. This sparked my interest in Ham radio again. So I started building and experimenting with analog circuits. I must confess I enjoy the learning much more than the communicating.

In general I build each section of a radio, and try to do the following

  1. Understand what the circuit is used for and what it does
  2. Understand how the circuit works
  3. Understand the steps to design and/or analyse the circuit
    • Warning - this often involves a bit of math
  4. Simulate the circuit in Spice
    • I use B2 Spice. I know it is not the most popular Spice tool but it was available to me and works reasonably well.
  5. Build, Measure and characterize the circuit
  6. Document all of the above for the circuit

It is the later that I hope to provide to others, and what is provided in the ham web pages of this site.

It's highly likely that I have mistakes in these documents, both typos and technical errors. Please feel free to let me know. Contact Me

I started with the Elenco AM/FM radio kit. Then built Dave Benson's, K1SWL Small Wonder Labs SW40+, followed by a complete home-brew Frequency generator.

I am currently working on a Tony Parks KB9YIG Softrock RXTX Ensemble.

When I started documenting these projects my documentation was just for my own use. I have re-documented many of the projects and that information is provided on this site. However I got too interested in other projects before re-documenting the crystal radio and the SW40+.