M0TEF - QRP and Amateur Radio

Last Monday I had a bit of free time and I have been planning to help Keith G0RQQ put his new audio CW filter into a box for some time. It made sense to use the bench in the workshop here because everything is set up and read to go, Keith preferred that option to destroying the dining table at his place. He has a Laserbeam dual band filter module from Sotabeams http://www.sotabeams.co.uk/dual-bandwidth-filter-modules-ssb-cw/ and I have to say it is a great bit of kit for something so small. Well worth the money to add a new level to older or wider receivers. In the classic QRP style Keith wanted to fit the board into an Altoids tin to be the ideal companion to his Frog sounds QRP single band 40m rig. Keith did add on the additional filter integration kit from Sotabeams for an additional £5.50. VK3YE has done a great look at this and has a video demonstrating its use on home-brew kit. Have a look at the video to get a really good idea of how this works. We really were b...

I have been enjoying my festive break from my work and spending a couple of weeks sorting out some projects and radio related experiments. I have fired up the little QRP rigs to work a handful of stations on CW. I never managed to work anything on the SW-20 rig with 2.5w into the butternut HF-9v antenna so moved onto the 40m band using the doublet antenna. It always seem more fun to me to work with the basic kit than with the big station and I seem to get a bigger kick out of working stations from the simple rigs, battery power and wire antennas. I did work a few stations around Europe but it was at this stage I felt the need to seek out the noise on the 40m band. You can see below the SW-20 with my spare HyMound Key and world map on the bench in the shack. I promised myself I would get to the bottom of some QRM that I was experiencing on 40m and causing issues to RX of weak signals on the 40m Band. I used my trusty little HB1B with a small telescopic antenna to check w...