At ED1R we use industrial (SKF) bearings on our towers for turning the antennas. The bearings are very affordable and reliable IF you protect them properly. We learned this lesson the hard way. After almost three years in service, I feel confident sharing our solution for adequately protecting the SKF bearings on antenna towers.
Some years ago, SDR-Kits used to sell a small prototyping PCB perfect for experimenting with a Vector Network Analyzer. After many experiments, the female pin headers on my prototyping board wore out. Since SDR-Kits no longer sells it, I designed my version of this PCB. The KiCad sources of the VNA prototyping/test board are available on my Github profile.
Back in 2020 I started a deep dive into the world of Electro-Magnetic-Compatibility (EMC). While measuring radiated emissions requires expensive anechoic chambers, typically only available in professional test labs, conducted emissions can actually be measured in a home lab with quite reliable and accurate results. One key element for measuring conducted emissions is a Line Impedance Stabilization Network (LISN). In this post I would like to share my experiences of building such a LISN with characteristics similar to commercial units.
Sometimes household appliances cause (significant) electromagnetic interferences in our receivers. Unfortunately, replacing them isn’t always an option. Fortunately, adding common-mode chokes to the input and/or output cables can drastically reduce the emitted interferences. Choosing the right ferrite material is probably the most important success factor. In this post, I compare three different materials and show how you can measure and evaluate (random) ferrite cores by yourself!
To access Icom Radio remotely (over the internet), Icom sells the RS-BA1 software. During the setup, I stumbled over a few, mainly networking-related problems. In this post, I describe the symptoms, the tools I used for network debugging (on Windows), and the possible solutions.
The year 2020 started with outstanding tropospheric VHF propagation here in southern Germany. For the first time, I was able to copy the VHF beacon GB3NGI from Northern Irland at a stunning distance of 1300km. Read more about this great opening and listen to the audio recording I made.
The ST-Link/v2 is an in-circuit debugger and programmer for the STM32 and STM8 microcontroller families. Due to its capabilities, it is an extremely popular device and clones are available from your preferred Chinese trading platform for less than 5 euros. I recently ordered a few of these cheap ST-Link/v2 clones for a new project. However, making them work was pretty frustrating. Read on to learn about the problem, the symptoms, and the (super) easy fix.
