New Weber rig in the works!

Started by gil, December 13, 2016, 01:05:19 PM

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gil

Received on the AT_Sprint Yahoo Public Group:

QuoteYou guys have been pretty quiet lately. This post should liven things up a bit. I'm about to order protoboards for a new rig I've been working on for the last couple of months. I figure you guys are about ready for a new project. This will be a bit of a departure from my usual variation on a theme. It uses the Si5351 PLL chip for the VFO, a 4 digit LED display for readout and a mostly discrete Jfet receiver. The tuning is rotary encoder. It will be single band for simplicity and to keep the cost down. The firmware is written in Ardunio C (which drives me crazy, but I was able to "borrow" the routines which run the Si5351 chip). Physically, it's built on two boards, a display/controller board and the Rx/Tx board, which get hard wired together. The Rx/Tx board is 3.1" x 2.8" and the display/controller board is 3.1" x 1.25". The display/controller board can be mounted at right angles to the Rx/Tx board or mounted above the Rx/Tx board. Now that I've let the cat out of the bag, I'll give updates as I make progress. But you should let me know if there is enough interest for this to go past the prototyping stage...
72/73 Steve KD1JV

I lost my MTR3b and MTR5b with my boat so I am already salivating at this new prospect. Buying an MTR3b from LNR Precision just didn't do it for me. I love the radio but I would enjoy it more had I built it. The only radio I still own that I built is the 1-Watter, which doesn't quite work yet. Disconcerting since I built so many kits, lost seven... I have built three surface-mount MTRs from Steve, all awesome radios. This one is a mono-band rig so I hope we can buy two!

Gil.

cockpitbob

I saw that today.  Great news ;D.  I need another build project!


Single band makes it a bit less exciting, but with my 3-band MTR I want one more band so I can have 80/40/30/20. I was going to do a 1Watter as soon as time freed up, but a Weber kit is always more fun and usually performs better than most stuff out there.

gil

The biggest problem will be to choose the band. With the low solar activity for a few years 30m would be the highest I'd go for, so 30, 40 or 80m. My MTR outputs 5W on 20/30/40 so 80m would be the logical choice. I do have the 1-Watter now but that's 1W and a narrow range... Anyway, it will be a while before kits are shipping... Maybe enough time to build a Rock-Mite in between ;-)

Gil

cockpitbob

My MTR is also set up for 40/30/20 so I was thinking 80 too.