Friday 21 June 2013

Tub Thumping

Butter tubs, that is. Dozens of them, mostly 500g, the occasional 1kg, and a couple of ice cream tubs.

Why? I'm adding to my component storage. I use butter tubs, in particular Sainsburys or Flora, because they stack well and are quite strong.  It makes separating different component types easier, and keeps them tidy. Which is something I really need to do better! Containers added to my shelves now for toroid cores and ferrite beads, trimmer capacitors, coil formers (ive included Toko/Spectrum 10Z and S18s in there), battery holders, relays, plus some others.

Its quite amazing just what a huge variety of different components there are. Its easy to lump, say, small signal transistors into one box, but thats still awkward - what about bipolar/FET? general purpose/RF? All I can say is I need a lot of butter tubs!

Anyway, enough about my storage difficulties. Some RF parts on order from G-QRP club sales today, mostly for the 4m transverter, but some to make a start on a 10m WSPR beacon transceiver. Just realised though, that if I decide to follow Roger G3XBMs design, im going to need half a dozen T37-6 toroids. I have T50-6 and T50-2, and could have ordered the 37's today, if i'd bothered to check the schematic! At least I have the crystals ordered!


Ive also had an idea regarding the secondary antenna for the show. I had planned some form of vertical array, but im wondering now if a cobweb might be the answer? It will go on the 5.4m mast, so not sure if the height is good enough.

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