Yoldashlar!
After I got back from my annual checkup yesterday at the old-guy doctor's office, I fired up the soldering iron & turned to on putting the recently arrived SSTRAN AMT3000 together. Took me about five hours with occasional breaks.
Prior to all that exercise, drivin' over to the dr's office & back to la estancia, I spent some time pushing the up & down buttons on the AM radio in the car. Since it was well past sun-up but not yet noon, I heard that familiar heterodyne whine & the fuzzy washing in and out of distant signals.
Yoldashlar!
After I got back from my annual checkup yesterday at the old-guy doctor's office, I fired up the soldering iron & turned to on putting the recently arrived SSTRAN AMT3000 together. Took me about five hours with occasional breaks.
Prior to all that exercise, drivin' over to the dr's office & back to la estancia, I spent some time pushing the up & down buttons on the AM radio in the car. Since it was well past sun-up but not yet noon, I heard that familiar heterodyne whine & the fuzzy washing in and out of distant signals.
That's when I realized why I like radio so much: you never know what you're gonna hear. That and remembering how it felt when I was a ten-year-old with a crystal set. But I digress. As usual.
When I hosed up the AMT3k to the Danmarks Radio audio comin' out of the computer, I fiddled with the knobs & checked out how it worked. (Which is "great," thankye.) Then I started my usual delusional escapades: lookin' at boxes and wires and pieces of this coil or that. And tryin' to figure how I could put the antenna here or there in the interim to the final arrival of the Dayton Hamvention and the beginning of spring.
All of which tied to the recent discussion of grounding, grounding legalities and ground systems, each of which I've fiddled with before. For the moment, I'm gonna staple some wire to the rafters & let the ground wire drop through the wall to the basement about 12 feet below where the transmitter's gonna be. Legal? Hell, I dunno. But it's a start.
I start working sheet metal on the box tomorrow. Maybe. Depends on how I feel after gettin' innoculated for 23 different kinds of pneumonia what old guys worry about. And whether or not I'm pressed into Christmas cooking yeomanship.
I am impressed with the AF I'm getting from the AMT3k. It sounded super on the MRL #2 DX Crystal set. And my home-brew loose-coupler crystal set too. We'll see how it works out when I staple the wire up. Put on my favorite Wm. S. Burroughs disk and go for a drive around the neighborhood.
Seasonal joys t' y'all.
73
Nils
W8IJN
Hi Nils,
Are you sure that the cracklin sound is not chesnuts roasting on an open fire? Maybe you are walking on the bubble wrap from your kit.
Also, do you think that the length of the staples are included in the 3 meter rule?
You mentioned the Dayton Hamvention (R). I used to go every year, but haven't for a while. No excuse since I live within repeater range of the Hara Arena. For those P15er's who don't know about this, all I can say is it cannot be described, just experienced. If it has anything to do with radio, it will be there.
Hope your checkup is OK. I also am an older guy and just had my shots. Also had a CAT scan and I don't even own a cat.
I guess my post doesn't have much to do with radio....so on topic, I think the AMT3000 has great audio. Is the sheet metal box you are building for the AMT3000? I ask because the Ramsey AM25 and FM25 I have had terrible hum problems until I put them in their own metal boxes. My AMt3000 doesn't and I am using it with the decoupling inductors enabled. I do get hum when I turn up the "compression" pot, but I think that it is coming from my sound card. If I unplug the audio, there is no hum. Going to work on this when I get a chance....too busy posting here to get this done.
73
Neil