SDR-Widget arrived

The SDR-Widget that I wrote about some months ago arrived today. I just unpacked and here is a few pictures:

I am really looking forward getting into this. The little problem I got is that I do not have any Softrock SDR to use it with right now. So it will be used as a normal sound card for a few days.

But I actually have both the Softrock Lite II and Softrock RXTX 6.3 here to be built. They have been in my drawer now for more than half a year but some days ago I started building again on the lite for 30m and no problems so far. I even managed to solder the SOIC chips ! I have been using the QS1R receiver that is some what more expensive SDR than these for some years now, but I really looking forward to use a radio that I have built myself and using only open source software !

A 20 W Dummy Load

This time I have built a dummy load. I got this design from Elecraft. It is 8 100 ohm resistors rated for 3 W each. 4 in parallel first that gives 25 ohm and then in serial with another batch, so in total 50 ohm. I can also measure the voltage and use a graph to find the corresponding power. Max power should be 20 W.

Here is a few pictures:

And by the way, the box is from IKEA.

Test equipment - LC and multi

The number of test equipment here continues to grow. This time it is a LC meter. The circuit I built  is more or less similar to this one:

http://ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au/~rice/lc/

A big thanks to Göran SM5AWU that had a kit with components that I bought. He also had done the PCB and drilled the holes for me.

I have also bought me a new multimeter. It´s the Vichy VC99 made in China. I bought it on Ebay for $30 including shipping. It has a few more features compared to the one I had before, like auto ranging, frequency counter, transistor and diode testing etc. It´s a little bit too plastic to feel really good, but at a good price I guess. I have not used it so much so far, but already found some minor issues, like it beeps very loud when it auto shut downs and the continuity tester is slow compared to the old multimeter. Maybe I can change the first behavior if I read the manual. I will continue to use both of them. A good buy overall!