Archive for the ‘HAM Radio’ Category

Wifi BiQuad Antennas

Saturday, January 18th, 2014

I needed some simple wifi antennas so I made some using 12 gauge copper wire and SO-239 couplers

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Start by hollowing out the coupler

There is a small ridge the keeps the insulator at the end of the pin

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The easiest way to remove it is to chuck it in a drill and file it off

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Them you can cut the edge of the outer casing into a small tab. Then reassemble the guts but without that ridge the insulator will go all the way down

I cut the edge to match that depth

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Now you can solder on a BiQuad of about 1.2 inches per side and find a suitable reflector

I used a 5 1/4 floppy drive platter

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Other stuff like steel switch plates works too as wel as regular chassis mount SO-239’s. i think the coupler makes adjusting the reflector position easier

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Not as cool as the circularly polarized WiFi antennas I made for a long range link

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They also have SO-239’s so I can use the same radios

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N connectors would have been a better choice

Routing PC Boards

Saturday, January 18th, 2014

My friend John was over and asked me if the CNC machine could be used to drill PC boards. I said sure, it could even route them too

So I decided to give it a try. I found a simple QRP transmitter design which I could use for an arduino project and tried to make a couple

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I built a 20M and a 40M board. They worked so well I’m going to route 2 more for 80M and 160M