I thought it looked like a radio before

In my last post I mentioned that it was starting to look like a radio. I really should have looked forward in the manual a little, because the next few pages really does turn it into a radio, with the side panels and front panel all attached to the main RF board. And best of all, it has passed its second smoke test as power has been applied with the front panel attached. The display works, and I've tested the audio, side tone, and even set the side tone frequency. The pictures are worth a thousand words though, check them out! Don't let the E42 bother you, that is a VFO error and the VFO isn't done yet.

K1 Powered On!


View from the top - RF board

It passed the smoke test!

The Elecraft K1 kit passed the smoke test today, the smoke test being when power is applied, you don't see or smell any smoke, nor does anything really heat up. I had to wind another toroidal inductor and two toroidal transformers. They are the round things wrapped in wire and pretty tough to make, but mine seem to have turned out nice. The crystals have been installed on the board, those are the large silver things. They are tough because you need to solder a small wire to the top of them to ground them to the board. Some major components have been installed that are starting to make it look like a radio, the antenna connector, headphone jack, & key jack. I sure am looking forward to getting on the air with this radio!

RF Board Top


RF Board Bottom

It has been three months...

It has been three months since I worked on my Elecraft K1 Transceiver Kit, but it came out of the box after dinner this evening and the build continued. I made a lot of progress on the RF board, I might even be about half way done with it! I did have a lot of trouble taking the pictures for the blog posting though. I'm not sure why, either they turned out too dark, or there was too much flash reflection. You'll see the horrible picture of the bottom of the RF board, which is the best out of eleven pictures I took.

RF Board Top


RF Board Bottom

Stale Potato Chips - No Problem

We've had this bag of ruffled potato chips around for a while, so long that they are passed their "best if used by" date. They do taste a little old, but they can be made better than new by adding some Old Bay. That basically makes them crab chips, and totally takes the staleness away. Yeah, I'm cheap, but hey, they are good!

Walkie Talkies are Great!

Robin bought Alex a set of spider-man FRS walkie talkies for Christmas. Tonight I decided it would be great to find them, give one to Alex and go back upstairs. A few seconds later I asked him if he could bring me up a cold Mountain Dew from the kitchen and he was ecstatically happy about it. Then a few minutes later, Amy asked him to bring her up a cold Coke. He didn't seem as happy, but he was sure to let us know that it was the last one in the refrigerator.

New Title Pics for Amy & Alex

I was looking around my Picasa albums and found a more recent picture of Alex and Amy to add to the title row. I liked the picture of Alex holding Aidan, but that was over two years ago now. I should probably get another picture of Andrew up there too, maybe later today. Of course, there are new pictures of me, but I look the same, just a little less hair.

The old pics:
Amy & Alex

New Zoe & Aidan Title Pics

Aidan & Zoe's pictures in my title bar were pretty old. They both look pretty different than they did more than a year ago. I have a new pic of Alex on the camera but the batteries are dead right now. Behind the scenes, I'm moving the new pics to my Picasa site.

Here are some older title pics:
Aidan, Zoe, and Aidan again

Civ IV with Amy

Last night and today Amy and I have spent several hours playing a Civilization IV Warlords. We started around 8:30 last night and went until 2:30am. Then today we played for a while, but it was a little on and off while chasing kids, doing laundry, etc.

Random Screenshot:

Subway

They just put a Subway sandwich shop near where I work. When it comes to Subway, the best part about their sandwiches is the fresh baked bread. I've been going there a bit and they keep asking me if I want my sub toasted. Why? I chose Subway, I didn't go to Quiznos for a reason, because I wanted a Subway sub, on tasty fresh baked bread that hasn't been ruined in a glorified microwave. So, here is the deal, when I want a toasted sub, I'll go to Quiznos and when I want a sub on fresh untoasted bread, I'll go to Subway, and there is no need to ask me if I want the sub toasted.

Amy's Blogging

Amy has been blogging regularly and should be for the rest of the month. There is something called National Blog Posting Month where you write at least one blog post per day for the month of November. http://www.modernprincess.com

Zoe Walks

While they aren't hear first steps, they are close. She seems to really want to walk now. Of course, when she really wants to get somewhere fast, she still crawls, but I guess that is to be expected for now.

Zoe Walks

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Started RF Board

I've started the RF board! It is the biggest part of the project and I'm looking forward to its completion. It looks like it is going to take a good 5 hours of work at my slow speed. Just sorting the parts took almost 30 minutes. It looks like there is nothing on it yet, but there are components soldered, trust me. On the top, you can see 15 or so resistors, 3 eight pin connectors, & 1 relay soldered to the board. On the bottom, there is not much to it yet, you can see the mounts on the edge, and the 20 pin connector that will connect to the front panel

RF Board Top


RF Board Bottom

Finished Front Panel

I don't know how I managed to do it, but I missed the potographing and blogging portions at the end of some work I did on the front panel board. The good news is, I actually did work on it once between 9/12 & 10/28. The better news is, it is starting to look like a radio.

A view from the front!


And the back!


Next up is the RF Board, which looks like it has about 3 times the number of components as everything I've built so far, maybe more.

APRS Balloon - W3EAX-11

I just happened to notice a station I didn't recognize on my APRS display this morning. Upon further investigation, I realized that it was a high altitude balloon that hadn't been launched yet. I took some time to sit down and watch it for a while a few times throughout the morning. I took some screen captures and filtered a log that I sent along to the e-mail address associated with that call. Here are two of the screen captures. The balloon and its track are on the left.

Soon after launch - click to enlarge:



Shortly after it stopped - click to enlarge:

Corndog!

If only this post had a picture, but we didn't bring the camera to the fair tonight. Of all the things that we did, the best part was Aidan eating his corndog. Just in case there is someone out there who doesn't know what a corndog is, check out Wikipedia's corndog entry. Now imagine a boy that is not quite two years old yet eating one, almost all of it. He may have eaten it all, but when he got down to the stick, I took it from him and ate it so he wouldn't poke is eye out. Oh yeah, Aidan also rode some rides, and so did Zoe, well, at least the carousel chariot. Alex really got my $15 worth out of the all you can ride pass. I think I about broke even. Amy didn't ride any rides tonight, she had Zoe on her back, but she rode many rides on Tuesday.

Fantasy Football - Won Week Two

I managed to win this week. No, I didn't cut Peyton for Eli, but I did play Randy Moss. There are a couple of more weeks, then some of my key players have bye weeks, hopefully Eli will be healty when Peyton is on the bye. I should probably pick up a defense and a kicker to play during their bye weeks too.

You'll never guess what I worked on tonight!

I pulled out the Elecraft K1 kit and started work on the second component, the Front Panel Board. I was surprised at how fast I progressed on this component. I'm about 1/2 way done in one sitting of about an hour and a half.

Front Panel Board - Top


Front Panel Board - Bottom


The filter board's components were all mounted on one side and soldered on the other, well, except for the multi pin connectors. The Front Panel Board is a little different, it has components mounted on each side, with some solder points ending up below components on the other side, I sure hope I don't have to re solder anything. I hope I can finish this component without letting too much time pass.

Lost my first match

Why did I pick some of these players again? Basically, after the first couple of rounds I started choosing by the overall player ranking, which didn't seem like such a bad idea at the time. The worst part is, why didn't I play them? Eli Manning did much better than Peyton, and Randy Moss had a great game. I was ahead after the Ravens game, but my opponent scored several points with his Cardinals wide receiver. Watching the Ravens game, I say that the offensive pass interference call was BS. If Todd Heap would have been given credit for that touchdown, I would have won. I guess that is just the luck of the draw.

Eli out does Peyton!

Two of the players I had on the bench this week in my Fantasy football team did very well. Too bad they don't help my score if they are on the bench! Although the Giants lost, Eli passed for a ton of yards and touchdowns. The other player was Randy Moss, he was supposed to be injured and not play much if at all, but ended up having a hell of a game, getting 24.3 fantasy points while the guy I put in for him, DJ Hackett scored 0.7 points. I'm loosing my first matchup 57.6 to 63.7. I have Todd Heap TE and Willis McGahee RB in for tonight. I still have some time to swap out Heap for Mark Clayton, but that is a toss up move, you never know which will do better, it depends on the defense.

Nothing better than working from home!

At least when you wife is home too and the babies are sleeping!