Hi everyone, I built Hans' 30M beacon kit and it is now on the air, about 100mW into a quarter wave vertical at around 14.140.030. What a fun little kit! I haven't seen it on any grabber yet, so please let me know if you hear me :) For those of you building the kit, I put together some construction notes, and a few ideas for when/if I get around to trying to homebrew my own... First, there are a few typographical errors in the text. Probably no big deal for most of you: - On page 2, The yellow toroids are 'T37-6'. - On page 3, building the xtal osc/buffer, there are many many typos: Missing C1, C3 listed twice, missing C9 & C10, missing R7. Also C5 & C6 (part of the LPF) should not be included in this step. If you just stuff all the parts for the top half of the board, you will have built the appropriate section. Be careful, after installing the microcontroller, when instructed to listen to your headphones. My tones were pretty loud. I like to cut my wire to length when winding the toroids. For 1" lead lengths, you can estimate the wire needed by the following formula: wire-length(in) = (#turns/2)+2. For instance, 20 turns on a T37 toroid would require (20/2)+2 = 12 inches of wire. If you wind all of the toroids in one step, be careful that you label which one is which. The 19 and 20 turn toroids look pretty much the same... When building the driver/PA, the holes for the pot were spaced too closely together. Hans mentioned this at FDIM. You can cut the pins, solder some wire leads into the holes, then solder the pot to the leads. The other issue for me was measuring power output. I don't have any sophisticated equipment in my shack, but I do have a 'scope. Doing the math, 100 mW into 50 ohms should generate a 6.3V peak to peak signal. By the way, Power (mW) = 2.5 * Vpp^2. I adjusted the pot until I got this voltage. Adjusting much higher made the 7000 get hot. For those like me who don't use a scope much, a 10x probe means that you should be looking for 0.63V, not 6.3V. While stuffing parts, I wondered if the power & RF holes could be spaced on 0.1" centers, so that header pins could be used. This would allow you to easily change the power source and antenna. I've also seen these arranged as 3 pins (GND,+5,GND) or (GND,RF,GND) so that, no matter which you attach your jumper, it will be correctly oriented. The other place 0.1" pins would be nice is for the speed setting jumpers. Then you could use those little removable jumper shunts to quickly change speeds. Some other ideas I thought about. - An onboard voltage regulator (or zener), to protect the microcontroller, allow 12V input, and possibly improve osc. stability. - NPO caps in the oscillator. - Are the unconnected inputs to the microcontroller OK? Do they reliabily float low? When listening on a receiver, what settings do you recommend? I just set the VFO at 10.140 MHz and listened in CW mode with a pitch of around 600 Hz, but wondering what others are using. And at what filter width? 1 KHz width should be enough, but is narrower or wider better? My beacon seems to be shifting down 5Hz, rather than up 5Hz, when sending data. I haven't figured out the reason for this yet. I thought perhaps I had set my rx for 'Rev-CW' mode by accident, but this isn't the case. Any ideas? Bruce - W8BH

Hello! First timer. I am getting excited about QRP and QRSS and need to build the G0UPL beacon. Eric Seebohm KG8FE echolink node # 516921 ____________________________________________________________ TODAY: iPads for $23.74? Special Report: Apple iPads are being auctioned for an incredible 80% off! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL3231/4bfadc6e416aa428ast06duc

Hello to the group. I have the 30 meter beacon up and running into a dummy load. It seems to work. I need to set the shift and will look at it with the scope later tonight. I'm go hang a dipole in a tree tomorrow and try to get it on the air. I will post when I'm ready to go with the freq. Nice little kit. Mike, W9QS

Can anyone please tell me if there is a "standard" frequency for each of the different bands , for operating QRSS , and a list of what those frequencies are ?   Thank you ,   73 , Charlie , W5COV

Just finished the beacon I bought from Hans at FDIM. Got code on pin two, but no discernible code from the output. It appears that pin 3 is at a constant 5 volts. As soon as I get time, I'll get together with my guru and try to find the problem. I'll post results in case anyone else has same problem. Outside of it not working for me, the kit was pretty straight-forward. I drilled out the rheostat holes before I saw the note from Hans, so we'll see how that worked. Looking forward to getting it on the air. Tery Johns KD8GNC

Hi Guys, Hans and I have sold out of kits and people still want them. So we intend to do another 100, 50 for 30 meters, 25 for 80 meters and 25 for 40 meters. I hope to have them ready for the end of June and will take a batch to Friedrischaven hamfest where I will be helping Jan G0BBL on the SDR-Kits stall. As soon as the kits are available we will post an announcement here and on the knightlights reflector. We hope to keep the price to $15 or the sterling/euro equivalents plus postage and packing. I hope we can take payments via Paypal. Regards, Steve G0XAR

The following QRPLabs poll is now closed. Here are the final results: POLL QUESTION: Hans and I are CONSIDERING doing another batch of beacon kits as we are being asked for more but are sold out though we do have a number of PCBs spare. To give us an indication of how many to produce and for what bands you are interested in it please complete the following poll. CHOICES AND RESULTS - I would be interested in a kit for 30 meters, 5 votes, 55.56% - I would be interested in a kit for 40 meters, 3 votes, 33.33% - I would be interested in a kit for 80 meters, 1 votes, 11.11% For more information about this group, please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QRPLabs For help with Yahoo! Groups, please visit http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/forms/general.html

I bought the kit at FDIM but have not assembled it yet.  However, I have been running the software and watching 30M 10.140.  Here is my problem...  I see some callsigns but what do I do with them?  Send an email to that person?  Is there not some common site where you post who you saw when so all can benefit from what I see?   Is there not a "chat room" such as K3UK has running for various groups: http://www.obriensweb.com/sked/index.html  Perhaps he would not mind if we posted our spots under one of the other headings for all to see such as the Ragchew page IF we preceded each post with QRSS: so they would stand out.  I see that Ragchew does not get much activity and K3UK is a good guy and might go along with it. Don't have a problem with having to do it manually vs fully automatic on WSPR but what chance do I have that I will ever find out if someone copies me once I get on the air?  I have googled and gone to several sites even the ones that show online what they are copying but it just seems all too complicated when WSPR does it so easily and automatically. W4QO Jim Stafford www.w4qo.com QRP - When you care enough to send the very least!

Greetings to the group. I'm unable to get ARGO to work with my Signalink USB external soundcard. ARGO wants to default to my onboard soundcard instead. Any idea how I can change this? I don't want to change my system wide default. My operating system is Win 7. 73 Mike N0QBH

Guys, For those of you who need a "Receiving QRSS 101" you can do no better than look at the website http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=16403 . Regards, Steve G0XAR

Guys, I think it might be a neat idea if we could plot locations of our beacons and grabbers on Google earth. Never done it before but from reading http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_spreadsheet.html#before_you_begin it looks fairly simple. Has anyone done this before? If list members thing the idea has merit I will give it a shot. I will need the latitude and longitude and band of some beacons to plot. If it works it would be my intention to open it out to the Knightlights group so we can map as many beacons and grabbers as possible. Regards, Steve G0XAR

Hello, I just put my QRSS kit from Hans Summers on the air a couple of days ago and would appreciate hearing of any "sightings" of my signal. What are the "various online grabbers" referenced in the QRSS Beacon Kit? Are these people, websites, software...? tnx es 73, ed - k9ew www.k9ew.us

I finisshed assy of beacon kit today. works fine. I set mine for 10.140040 mhz and 5hz shift at qrss 6   I plan to mount mine at center of dipole with a 5volt regulator in the box. I will send up 12 rg59 cable tv coax with f connectors. I wonder how temp stability will be.   Good job Steve and Hans.   thanks   Paul Daulton k5wms

New to the group and didn't get to Dayton. I'm hoping to buy a 30m kit from the next batch. 73 Mike N0QBH

Hello all, Beacon running on 10.140050. About 50 mw. I hope I've got the frequency set right. Looking for possible reports. Mike, W9QS Urbana, IL

I've been testing it for a bit, and finally put it online Sunday night. My friend, W8MOJ, got the signal and later I saw it on W1BW's grabber. Woohoo! Tomorrow (Wed) evening I'll put it online again into my G5RV. Look for me at 10.014.035 Mhz. Thanks to Hans and Steve for a great kit! KD8GNC Tery Johns

Is there a site that keeps track of real time 30m QRSS activity or, at least, stations that have been active of late? Steve / VE7SL

Welcome all new members who joined the list! Congratulations to all who have recently announced their kit completion and getting on air! I have a page on my website about the kit http://www.hanssummers.com/qrsskit and I have a section there, showing some photos and comments from builders. If you have anything to add, please email me. I strongly recommend everyone who is active on air with the kit, join the Knights QRSS group and announce your activity there. The link is: http://cnts.be/mailman/listinfo/knightsqrss_cnts.be . Going forward, this Knights list is the best place to announce your activity, and any experiments you do with QRSS e.g. antennas, new mode experiments, propagation, etc etc. My suggestion is that we keep this forum for discussion of the kit itself - e.g. any difficulties people have with it, or successes, or modifications people make and would like to share. By all means, tell us when you get your kit on air, and how it goes! But don't neglect the QRSS Knights list which should be the main place to announce your activity! This is just a suggestion: this is your forum and a democracy! Steve G0XAR is frantically putting together the new kits, so we can start to offer them again (same price). We have a waiting list of over 30 people. We'll also be producing 40m and 80m versions. So kit announcements will be here too. Going forward, we're also working on the design of a high performance QRSS receiver kit. 0.000073 de Hans G0UPL http://www.hanssummers.com

 Hi All,   I am building the 30M QRSS and one of the interim checks is to see if the circuit is oscillating at 10.140 MHz.   I am using my FT-450 to check for oscillation, cw mode, and I do not detect any noise there or anywhere +/- 200 Hz. I decided to check voltages with my meter - one side of the crystal shows voltage and the other side shows zero. Is the zero V reading normal on one pin of a crystal if there is a voltage on the other side? If not, then may I assume the crystal is probably something I need to replace?   72, Newt k0nwt or K0NeWby T

Hi all - Just joined this list and hope I am on the waiting list for the next run of 30m kits. My home QTH is very noisy electrically (power lines and several industries nearby) so HF receive operation is a bit of a chore, but at least I can set up beacons! The next one after the 30m will be 10m, and then possibly LowFER or MedFER. The calls on 30m and 10m will be VA3XRB (for "Xperimental Radio Beacon"!) and simply XRB on LowFER and MedFER. I'll post here and on the various other beacon boards when I get operational. Now back to my other interests - laser communications and 9kHz experiments... Regards, Keith VA3QF / VA3XRB CAMBRIDGE, Ontario EN93tj