Baby's First Crystal Filter

 I've decided I want to make an SSB, along the lines of the BitX or something.  Along those lines, I decided I should make a crystal filter for use in it.  I'll be following the directions from W7ZOI.

First, I ordered a lot of 100 9MHz crystals off of Aliexpress:

I plan to match them using the NanoVNA.  The Windows software for that has instructions on making a test jig (basically 4:1 matching transformers and 3db pads on either side of the crystal) and apparently has a mode to let you match crystals in batch.  But I got impatient and wanted to see what it would look like to just make one with the first four crystals I pulled.  The result is here

And the sweep on the NanoVNA as follows

The best I can tell, it is centered at 8.9978MHz with a 1.8KHz bandwidth (to the -3dB point), with a 2.48dB insertion loss.  Which isn't far off what I want (was aiming for a 2KHz bandwidth).  So all in all, a pretty good result I think?  I want to try again with NanoVNA Saver when I get a chance (to get better numbers/pictures) and I really should actually calibrate it :)  But it was a quick test when I had a few minutes between things. 

Edit: Got NanoVNA going, and calibrated.  I was pretty spot on before.

New Antenna - QRPGuys DS1

 I put together a QRPGuys DS1 antenna today.  Went together pretty well.  Really the only hard part was screwing in one of the BNC connectors (because I didn't have anything that was the right tool for holding one of the bolts).  I had to order a tap, and needed to pick up a few things at Home Depot.

Haven't had a chance to do much with it yet - just measured the SWR on 40m.  

Can't really see the NanoVNA screen here.  The SWR seemed to move a bit - probably because I was using a short coax and my body was affecting things.  When stable, it seemed to be about 1.1:1 at 7.058, and went up to 2:1 at 7.118.  So, overall a bit narrower than I would like, and possibly centered a bit low.  Will hopefully get to try WSPR on it soon.

Got a few minutes to fire it up in the backyard:

Not getting as far as I'm used to, but this is also not the best time of day (5pm in the afternoon).  

And I am definitely getting farther on my dipole

On the air

 Wanted to take my new paddle out for a spin, so broke out the QCX.  Tried calling for a while, but no takers.  The only people I was hearing were *really* fast or they were far away.  Ho hum.

I got three spots on reverse beacon network.  Had hoped I'd get more.  So broke out the GPS board and tried to see who could see me on WSPR.

Amp success!

 Playing around with the amp again from the other day, but this time *with* power to the driver...

And I'm getting a solid 5w out!  Exciting result!  Now, mind you, in LT Spice it was showing like 17W out, but I'm still excited with the result.  

Board is extremely messy, and wires are all over the place.  Need to decide if I want to clean this up and make it more permanent or not.  Also want to wind the QRP Labs LPF (as opposed to using the cwaz one I made years ago).

Also, isn't the red LED fun!

New paddle

 I 3d printed a new paddle.  Am pleased with it.

Here is the old/new together.

I am trying to make an ESP32 interface so I can do BLE to my iPhone so I can use it when I'm practicing on Morse-It, but so far it hasn't worked.  I managed to get it to be recognized on the wife's Windows laptop, but not on the iPhone/Mac.  I finally downloaded a program called "BLE Scanner", at which point I managed to get it to pair, but still can't get it to work with the morse program.  :/

UPDATE!

Is working now!  Still not sure why it wasn't showing up initially.  But the issue with sending seemed to be the 'delay' I had in there.  A longer one let it work, but then wasn't response enough.  (Only had the delay due to the example in the library I was using.)  Ended up rewriting using the debounce2 library, and am happy with the result.

Code is here

Now just need to design a box to print, etc.  May try to use a rechargeable battery I have to make it more portable.  (The Adafruit Huzzah32 has a built in LiPo charger with undervoltage protection).  All in all, result!

Playing around with a different irf510 setup

 Just wanted to get back to building again, so threw together something from a couple of sources.  Basically trying to bring up the Si5351 voltage to something, then put into a totem pole driver, and then into an IRF510.  In LTSpice it is working great (17w), but on the bench, not so much (1.5w).  The first driver section gives me what I want by itself, but when I put the totem pole on, it drops, so the transistor isn't turning on/off as hard and wasting power in between.  Might try to poke some more later, but may try a different approach.

EDIT: the whole "sleep on it" thing wins again.  Woke up early the next morning with my first thought being "you totally didn't connect Vcc to your driver".  Sure enough, I was so focused on triple checking the IRF510, I missed the power to the totem pole!  So I'm surprised I was getting anything at all out of it, much less 1.5w!  :)

I also was driving with a sine wave instead of a square wave like I intended.  Will need to go over my build and test again when I'm able to focus better...

Gate Driver Woes

 So, my current theory is that I blew both sides of one of my drivers and one side of the other.  I had the suggestion on the QRZ forum to look at the waveform output without any transistors attached.  On one of them I don't see anything on either output.  On the other I see on the "top" output only.  So guessing I blew something up.  Hm.