Equipment
To listen and/or operate on air, radio amateur needs some kind of equipment. Generally, there are two significant parts: receiving and transmitting. To receive signals, we need antennas, antanna feeding cables, impedence matchinng units (also known as antenna tuners) and a receiver. To transmit, we need a signal generator (telepgrah or audio), transmitter, low-pass filters (must) and receiving setup. Setup varies from station to station and may include additional pieces of equipment, such as antenna tuners, power meters, power amplifiers. Combination of receiver and transmitter is known as tranceiver, which mostly holds necessary elements in one case. Some enthusiasts build equipment themselves, some obtain them from shops, second-hand radio amateur related events. This book is about equipment I had experience with, general thoughts, ideas and vision.

RX Receivers



TX Transmitters
Nowadays, transmitter usually is part of transceiver, that is why is chapter mostly dedicated to self-contained transmitter projects, such as radio beacons (telegraph, WSPR and APRS).



XCVR Transceivers
A transceiver stands for TRANSmitter/reCEIVER, a combination of receiver and transmitter. Usually, a main element on radio amateur desk ("shack") and a door (or window) on the air.

FlexRadio 6400
Shortcuts for SmartSDR (on Macintosh) 

 Global shortcuts 

 

CMD-D DX-Cluster

View

OPT-CMD-R Radio Control

OPT-CMD-S Slice details

OPT-CMD-P PTT

OPT-CMD-P Log new QSO

 

 

 Key mappings 

 

 Challenges 

 Absence of sidetone on telegraph transmission 

 Solution: 

 Local: use phones/speaker attached to transceiver 

 Remote: 

 Manually key the FlexRadio using SmartSDR 

 Solution: 

 Local: attach key/paddle to transceiver 

 Remote: via MIDI/Serial tool box, such as 

   

 

 

 

 Software 

 Solution Chain 

 Hardware 

 Pros 

 Cons 

 

 

 SmartSDR for Windows 

 HaliKey MIDI + NetKeyer for Windows, MacOS, and Linux 

 HaliKey MIDI 

 

 ? no sidetone 

 

 

 SmartSDR on Windows 

 HaliKey Serial: NetKeyer for Windows, MacOS, and Linux 

 HaliKey Serial 

 

 ? no sidetone 

 

 

 SmartSDR on Windows 

 CTR2 MIDI 

 Lynovation - CTR2 Midi 

 Buzzer for sidetone on board 

 

 

 

 SmartSDR on Windows 

 CTR2 Micro  

 Lynovation - CTR2 Micro 

 Buzzer for sidetone on board

ANT Antennas
Antennas are all of sorts. They can be big, very big and strange. Due to the limitations of my locations (QTH), mostly, I build portable antennas.



PA Power Amplifiers
Power amplifiers are intended.. hmm.. to amplify power of outgoing signal from transmitter to antenna. I would categorize power amplifiears, very broadly into three categories: low power QRP (to 20 W), normal power (to 100-200 W) and high power QRO (all above), sometimes you may see QROO (which stands for very high power and, usually, amount power which is being delivered is not asked, but silently observed from power meter. :D

00164 - QRO Power Meter
= Objectives = 
 
 measure outgoing and reflected power from transceivers and power amplifiers. 
 
 = Resources = 
 
 digital power indicator and measurament board (https://eb104.ru) 
 case aluminium case 
 
 = Schematics = 
 = Assembly = 
 = Inital run and adjustments =

PSU Power Supply Units and PDU Power Distribution Units
To be able to emit radio signals, we need energy. That energy, usually, comes from the socket, but not always. This chapter is all about it.