As an introduction to electronics, over the last few months ive been building a QRP-Labs beacon transmitter. Its a nifty little kit produced by Hans Summers and he offers a number of amateur radio related kits.
Heres a shot of the enclosed Ultimate3 - its currently in a working state however its still a work in progress - Im in the process of building the receiver module and still have the LPF relay board and 5w amp yet to build:
The kit comes as a number of different modules and so far ive got the base transmitter module, a 40 meter (7mhz) ham band low pass filter and a GPS module built for the kit. The kit can operate in a variety of different digital ham modes and is mainly aimed at being used in a standalone beacon context. So far, Ive got the beacon transmitting the popular WSPR weak signal propagation digital mode, with output on the 40M ham band sitting at around 300mw.
Heres a screenshot below taken from the wsprnet.org weak signal propagation reporter network website showing my spots for a 24 hour period. Its pretty amazing just how far you can get with such low power - as a comparison, your average home wireless Access Point will be putting out over twice the power that the Ultimate3s is transmitting at!
Heres a shot of the enclosed Ultimate3 - its currently in a working state however its still a work in progress - Im in the process of building the receiver module and still have the LPF relay board and 5w amp yet to build:
GPS module:
The GPS module is highly recommended as alot of beacon modes, such as WSPR and the JT modes require accurate and precise timekeeping which GPS provides, along with an accurate Maidenhead grid location. It can also be used to calibrate the U3S transmissions by using the GPS signal as a reference frequency to correct any temperature induced drifting of the U3s. The GPS is extremely sensitive, with a large PCB which doubles as a ground plane for the built in patch antenna (an external antenna can be used)
The GPS module is highly recommended as alot of beacon modes, such as WSPR and the JT modes require accurate and precise timekeeping which GPS provides, along with an accurate Maidenhead grid location. It can also be used to calibrate the U3S transmissions by using the GPS signal as a reference frequency to correct any temperature induced drifting of the U3s. The GPS is extremely sensitive, with a large PCB which doubles as a ground plane for the built in patch antenna (an external antenna can be used)
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