[hpsdr] Mercury arrived north of the Arctic Circle and more.

[Kjell Karlsen]

Hello all.

As I wrote a few days ago I received my Mercury and got it up and running  
for around 30 min. Unfortunately this was during a heavy snow shower and  
when I disconnected the antenna I felt a static discharge and got a strong  
hum in the earphones for a few seconds and then silensium!!

Fortunately it seems as if Mercury survived but Ozy is dead. I have  
located the fault to a short in the Cyclone II chip and the 3.3V  
regulator. A new one is ordered from DigiKey and is on its way and I have  
also ordered a new Ozy from TAPR.(in stock, lucky me) I think I have  
learned that one can never be to careful with grounding and static  
prevention!

I am in the meantime finishing the work on a cabinet for the HPSDR  
Transceiver. This cabinet is also going to house the PC with a 8" LCD  
monitor with touch screen. The PC is an INTEL mini ITX with a Dual Core  
2.4 GHz processor. The cabinet is a little bit biger than my IC756PRO III.  
I never liked the idea of using a PC for controll of my radio, therefor I  
decided to build a stand alone unit for it. When I have finished this, I  
am going to give a better description of the project with pictures. It  
will be very difficult to duplicate the enclosure without having a good  
mecanical workshopp available, but you may get some ideas from my  
solution.I think it will be to expensive to have someone producing it, but  
if the numbers are high enough, may be?

I have a Griffin Technology Power Mate rotating opto encoder for the  
frequency tuning. When playing with PowerSDR I discowered that the mouse I  
am using is very good for frequency tuning. It is the MX Revolution from  
Logitech. The mouse wheel has a special function for fast scanning, if you  
spinn it up there is  a fly wheel that keeps it running for several  
seconds. It is possible that by using this mouse, it is not necessary to  
use the Power Mate or another Rotary Encoder at all. The MX Revolution is  
not the cheapest but in my opinion one of the best I have used.

I also will thank all in the crew of this project for the fine job they  
have done. I am impressed of the spirit and enthusiasm for so long time.  
It seems as if the results are as good as expected or even better. Good  
luck in the future and I hope I may be of some help one day.


73, de LA2NI Kjell

 1231713439.0