Happy Birthday Faith

Just wanted to give a shout-out to my daughter Faith K5FTS. Happy 17th Birthday. 

Experimental Methods in RF Design

 My life is not in the best shape at this time. Due to my wretched health, I am confined to bed nearly every hour of the day. There are many days that I feel as if someone in prison has more freedom than me. Prisoners get to go to the yard every now and then. I don't want this to be my life. I won't let it be. Yeah, I am in really bad shape. My back surgeon doesn't want me to get out of bed even to go to the bathroom. Someday I hope that will change. 

My body may have failed me but my brain works nearly as well as a well-oiled engine that's out of gas. I have officially been an amateur radio operator for a decade. It was April 2013 when I got my ticket. It was May 2013 when I got my first QSL card. Yeah sure it was from a FCC Listening Post but I'm still counting it. 

I would really love to expand my horizons into homebrewing my own gear. Yeah I have a homebrew project started with the sBITX. that is because I REALLY  want that radio and I can't afford it, so homebrewing it is the only chance that I will ever have at getting one os to brew my own. So in order to do that, I must learn electronics. I was not born with a golden transistor in my fist. I have absolutely zero experience in electronics. I'm learning on the go. However I have a plan......

I think...

There are two books that have become homebrew Bibles. Those are Sold State Design for the Radio Amateur and Experimental Methods in RF Design. I decided to use that later since I have a paperback copy of it. 

So my plan in learning homebrew electronics is pretty simple. I plan on building as many circuits in EMRFD as I can. By doing this I hope to:

•  Learn enough about electronics that I can possibly help someone in the future.
• Share my builds here on my blog to encourage others to comment and advise me on improving my skill. 
• Pay forward all of the help that so many others have given me over the years.
• Get a follower to my blog lol

So that is my world-changing plan. is to start at the beginning of EMRFD and start screwing up uh ok, building the circuits. I'm gonna do my best to build each circuit to the best of my ability. I would like to say test and explore each circuit but since I don't have much in the way of test equipment, but we will bomb that bridge before we get to it. I'm going to write it up my way. I don't want it to be just another dry blog. I pay for the site domain, and hey, like the call sign says, I am bloody Aaron the Great. 

So if you wish to be entertained by my multitude of mistakes, and let me tell you this the mistake stein will never go dry, so all you have to do is to lay down that clock on the follow button and you will become one of the chosen few. I'm n American and I support freedom of speech so throw down your lines in the comments department. While you are at it sling me an email at Aaron@K5ATG.com

Solder on my friends

'72

Aaron K5ATG

sBITX Part II- Monitor troubles

 Greetings Earthicans,

For the last few days my progress on the sBITX has been hampered by one single problem. I loaded up the Raspberry Pi OS on my RPI and it would not load up on the monitor. It would load up just fine on my 43" television. The people of BITX20 is group came to my rescue with several attempts on fixing the problem. Eventually I slowly (Ok I admit, sometimes I can be slower than a sumo in a sprint) came to the conclusion that the issue could be in the monitor. For the record here is the monitor that I am using:LONCEVON 7 inch Mini HDMI Monitor

I contacted Loncevon support and we will see if they help me out. In the meantime, I will be stumbling forward on this build by start building the different modules. I will start by building the low pass filter. I also have another project to start but it will be more for building me than the circuits I build. 

Well, you know where to leave your words and my email is still Aaron@K5ATG.com

Be safe and hit hard

Aaron