Broadcast - 25 August 2024
Last technical night Ross VK7ALH continued his theme for the month with another transceiver from the Ten-Tec stable. This one was called the Omni and was a fairly conventional 100 Watt, HF, Amateur transceiver of the period, circa 1980s. As you might expect it exhibited an excellent level of construction, plenty of plug in printed circuit boards and even a couple of rather nice crystal filter boards, with each filter comprising of eight individual crystals!
This rig wasn’t in for repairs but was one from Ross’ vast collection of radios and was just receiving a bit of a once over. It came to the club rooms as a comparison in technology with the Ten-Tec Jupiter a couple of weeks ago. The Jupiter was the beginning of the Software Defined Radio or SDR influence at the company. Versions of the Omni stayed in production for many years with the Omni VII still in production well past 2006.
Andre’ VK7ZAB brought along a new soldering station that clips onto his Ryobi battery pack that he uses for his portable power tools.
After seeing Peter VK7KPC’s soldering station on an earlier Tech Night using an Ozito battery pack he thought it was a good idea. He does have a couple of good bench soldering stations but you need power cables for antenna or motor vehicle work. He also has a gas powered iron, but that is usually empty.
Like Peter, Andre’ also purchased his from “Cross Fire Power dot com”. https://crossfirepower.com
They are an Australian supplier doing the 3D printed cases with the integrated battery connector and built around a T12 soldering station module. All the common brand name 18 Volt batteries are supported along with a large selection of affordable tips for different jobs. The range covers from simple LED display to the OLED Pro with its settings menus.
Unlike the short replaceable tips in his old Weller and Hakko irons, these tip insert assemblies are about 150mm long. The first 100mm is inserted into the handpiece and locked into place, this contains the heating element along with the thermocouple. The last 10mm is the actual soldering tip that you see and use. This makes for faster heat-up and quicker control. Also this should be cheaper to repair if the element fails, just insert another tip assembly and you are ready to go again as all heating parts have been replaced. Check out the pictures for a better idea.
The light weight handpiece has a motion sensor to detect when the iron is not being used and switches to a standby temperature. Andre’ demonstrated that when picked up it only took 8 seconds to heat up to operational temperature.
Using the standard PCB size tip, it easily tinned a 25 amp multi-strand wire, the tip temperature stayed rock steady with power out peaking at about 50%, so this would be more than capable of soldering on to a PCB ground plane. The web site doesn’t have any technical specifications available on the systems but packaging for the tips has DC power listed as up to 25 Volt and a maximum of 80 Watts. Andre’ purchased one of the tips suitable for SMD, so he is going to compare the performance to his trusty old irons and see if the T12 can supplement or replace them?
And now for something completely different! As you are aware from these broadcasts, Ross VK7ALH has brought in many and various transceivers over the years being repaired, restored or just admired. This all takes time but he does sometimes actually get to use them on air! Last weekend was the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend or ILLW for short. So Ross organised a couple of days away at the Low Head Lighthouse, located at the mouth of the River Tamar. But not just Ross, there seems to be a bit of a tradition happening that has been going for quite a few years.
This year Ross with his VK7LH hat on was joined by VKs - Al 7AN, Roger 2RO, Graham 7GS, Dave 7LG and Peter 7ZPE. They are a pretty dedicated lot and rented the Light Keepers House at Low Head for their radio base camp set up and of course accommodation if they were lucky enough to sleep!
As the name suggests their accommodation was originally constructed for the Lighthouse Keepers to live in while they maintained the Lighthouse with its all-important light. The cottages started to fall into disrepair many years ago, but luckily this stimulated the urgency for the restoration of these heritage buildings and the eventual use as rentable accommodation. They certainly come with a pretty cool view, both visually and radio send and receive wise.
I am not sure how the on air QSOs went but I do know the weekend was rounded off with a lunch at the Pilot Station Café, located just down the road and far enough away from the sound of the lighthouse “Fog Horn” that hopefully still sounds every Sunday, at midday, for the visitors. Their numbers were swelled with the arrival of VKs - Colin 7ZCF, Phil 7PM, Rodney 7HAM, Stuart 7ES and Fran who all happened along to enjoy lunch.
Just for information there has been a lighthouse on this site since 1833 and it was the second to be “lit” or turned on in Tasmania. The tower we current see replaced the ailing original tower in 1888.
Hopefully we will get an in-depth update on equipment used and contacts achieved next club technical night from Ross.
As always, pictures will be available on the NTARC Web site under “Blogs” for this broadcast. NTARC Blogs
UPCOMING EVENTS
TestNet and TechNet session - Every Wednesday, TestNet/CW course on 3.580MHz from 7 pm till 7.30 pm, then a TechNet on 3.567MHz from 7.30 pm till 8.30 pm. Your host for the evening is Nic VK7WW.
Club Room Technical night session - The next session will be on Wednesday the 28th August and will commence at the usual time of 6.30 pm at the Club Room Archer Street, Rocherlea.
Coffee Morning - held every Friday in the NTARC Club rooms. Time is from 10 am to noon and we look forward to seeing you all there. So why not pop in check the QSL cards and join us for a cuppa, there is endless tea and coffee along with biscuits available for a donation.
Finally - A reminder to all members that if you have any items of news you would like added to our weekly roundup, no matter how trivial, then please email them to the Secretary at the following address news@ntarc.net all items to be received no later than 5 pm on the Friday prior to the Broadcast.
That’s all folks,
73, Stefan VK7ZSB, Secretary NTARC Inc.
