CAKE Crumbs Aug.12 2017

CAKE Crumbs August 12

Tom  KW6S and Ron W6WO  were the only ones present today but of course weenjoyed some good conversation. Tom brought a power amplifier for 6m which he made from scratch 40 years ago. It looked brand new and demonstrated construction to a most professional standard – a truly fine example of home brew.  Tom also showed a  WSPR lite 200mW beacon product and outlined his plans for assessing  antennas, we look forward to hearing more.

We discussed advances in solid state RF power devices and in particular those made by IXYS. These are designed for non-linear PA operation in class D and E that operate at KV levels and at frequencies well above HF. Their use in the ISM band 13.6 MHz is of particular interest. The driver can be used as a standalone QRP amplifier with a CMOS square wave input. Ron mentioned he built one a few years back that produced  sinusoidal output of 15Watts after filtering- mW input to Watts out ! Both of us are well aware of the special need for a clean DC  power supply and cautious pulse widths to avoid destruction.

The article entitled AREDN  Amateur Radio Emergency Digital Network in the  June 2017 QST was discussed.  Tom recalled that we had considered a similar project in the past but had not acted on it as a regional project.
 This final sentence of the article may revive our interest. ” Plans have been formulated to link Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in 2017 and San Louis Obispo, Monterey , San Benito and Santa Clara counties
in 2018 “. Clearly this prompts the question “Why not Santa Cruz ?” Interest anyone ?

73 for now, we  hope to see you on Sept 9th, same time, same spot on the dial
Ron W6WO