Articles and radio trivia from VK3CAE...
Antenna related articles
Here is a brief paper of mine about the standard UHF coaxial connectors found on a lot of UHF type Amateur and CB radio gear... Just how bad are they at these frequencies?
Path Loss at VHF, UHF and Microwave frequencies. A free Space graphical representation that can model real world systems with examples plotted at amateur frequencies.
Can't fit that 80m antenna into your yard, here's a practical example of coil loading a dipole to obtain a 50% reduction in length without a large signal loss (>1/2 S point).
Construction Projects
Upgrade notes and revised Schematic for the MDRC Mark 4, 20 Amp, Power Supply. This unit is still popular, as you can use recycled bits for most of the construction.
A wide band pre amp for SWL and Scanner use from VLF to beyond 1000 MHz using a Mini Circuits monolithic amplifier...
Antenna Tuning Unit (ATU) using the T-Network approach. Building an ATU can be fairly straight forward but there's some important considerations that must be made when sourcing components.
Vintage Radio receivers and transceivers
A Brief History of the FT-101, some words on the popular 1970's Yaesu Amateur transceiver.
Are you, like myself, interested in The Wadley Loop HF Receivers of the 1960's and 70's?
Eddystone EC10 Communications Receiver... A look at the prolific 1960's and early 70's solid state communications receiver. Eddystone produced thousands of these over a 13 year period.
The McKay Dymec DR 22 Communications Receiver is not quite a vintage box yet but what's a year or two when you're talking about such a unique example of early PLL receiver technology.
Repair and Modification notes from my collection (more to come)
The Kenwood TS-680S HF + 6 Mtr amateur transceiver, a collection of tested modification notes.
E-mail VK3CAE (Ex VK3JEG): cja@rmit.edu.au