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.
I saw that today. Great news ;D. I need another build project!
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o170/cockpitbob/Emoticons/party_zps2d69794f.gif)
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.
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
My MTR is also set up for 40/30/20 so I was thinking 80 too.