John S. Huggins

John is an electrical engineer working in astronomy and aerospace including antenna/RF design spanning 36 years with experience in antenna design including improvements (US20170201002A1 & USD798847S1) to the J antenna.

New QRP Radio Now Includes Spiffy Case

QRPKits.com has introduced the next model of their famous DC-xx series, the DX-xxB where xx = 20, 30 or 40 meters.

These are single frequency QRP units that are easy to build and fun.

The QRPeanut Can transceiver featured on HamHelpDesk uses a DC-40A unit.

This easy to build QRP transceiver is a single channel direct conversion crystal controlled assembly available for use with CW.

All you need to add is antenna, keyer, headphones and power. An antenna matcher makes good sense too.

Improvements include:

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Airplane Navigation Receiver Antenna Balun

An airplane mechanic friend, who also happens to own a 35 year old single engine Cessna airplane, was working on his tail light when he saw broken and aging components in his tail mounted navigation antenna. While working to fix the problems he discovered an interesting balun technique.

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QRPeanut Can Transceiver

Last fall I purchased a QRPKits.com DC40A QRP transceiver. At around $40 it is a no brainer purchase for any kit builder attempting to keep in practice. I really wanted to try an Elecraft, but budgets are budgets. I have my main rig now so I finally decided to take the built and tested DC40A board and house it. During testing I soldered a piece of coax straight to the antenna points on the board. The center conductor broke at the board pretty quick. I was motivated to tie that antenna signal to a bulkhead BNC.

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Turning AGC Off Helps Kenwood TS-2000 CW

A ham on the local Sunday Night Tech Net reported a technique that improved the reception of CW measurably.

He has a Kenwood TS-2000 transceiver. As time went by he used various adjustments while listening to CW. He was never quite satisfied with the noise levels that came in along with the desire CW signals. Variables adjusted include the RF Gain and AGC response time.

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