This past two weeks I have been working on two more beacons. Both beacons are for the 6m Magic Band. You can read more HERE about the ZS1I 6 Meter Magic Band Project in the Southern Cape Area of South Africa.
Herewith a short update on the progress made with regards to the two 6 Meter Amateur Radio Beacons:
1. Antennas:
The antennas for the 6 Meter CW Beacon and the 6 Meter WSPR Beacon has been built and tested with my SWR Analyzer. More information available HERE and HERE about the antennas.
The 6m Delta Loop Antenna was installed and is ready for operation. The 6 m Moxon Antenna is now ready to be installed hopefully in the next few days. More on this once the Moxon antenna has been installed.
2. 6 Meter CW Beacon:
I have been working on and off on the beacon the last week or two. I ran into a few software snags one being the fact that no RF power was generated by the SI5351. Although the Arduino Nano, OLED, LED and Beeper was fully operational I could not get any RF signal from the SI5351. Fault finding revealed that I had a small solder bridge at CLK0. I removed the tiny bridge but still no RF signal. The only other area to look at was the Arduino Sketch (firmware program) installed on the Arduino Nano. To look at the sketch I had to access it via the Arduino IDE and guess what I ran into port issues to program the Nano. Well all the issues took some time to fix. I changed the sketch several times and than ran the beacon. I managed to get RF output at CLK0 but now the OLED was not working. This also took some time to sort out. Eventually "Old Murphy" left the Workbench and Shack and the 6m CW Beacon was fully operational with +- 5 Mw output at CLK0. Success at last!
3. 6 Meter Low Pass Filter:
As the SI5351 puts out a square wave signal, I needed to construct a 6 m low pass filter to keep the harmonics (if any) at bay. You will need this filter! Luckily I had the parts available in my junk box. So the filter was constructed and tested. It works as it should and I did not detect any harmonics after testing the unit.
4. 6 Meter Power Amplifier:
The current 5 Mw RF output of the beacon is way to little power and I decided to construct a 6m amplifier designed by the late Doug DeMaw W1FB. More on this once I constructed the amplifier.
Well once the amplifier is constructed and working as it should, all the modules will then be built into a cabinet and the beacon will be put on the air.
5. ZS1I 6m WSPR Beacon (STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION):
I uploaded the firmware (sketch) into the ESP32 S3 N16R8. Apart from this no other work has been done to the 6m WSPR Beacon. More information on this beacon will be provided once I finished the CW Beacon Project.
Finally:
Please take note that these projects do take some time and that I do not work on them all the time. A lot has been done this far and I hope to have the 6m CW Beacon on the air by the end of next week. Updates to follow on the Next Generation Amateur Radio Beacon (s) for the Southern Cape.
Images: (Click on images for larger view)
